



Qass 
Book 









THE TOWN: 

ITS MEMOBABLE CHARACTERS AND EVENTS. 



By LEIGH HU 



WITH FORTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATION 




A NEW EDITION". 



LONDON: 
SMITH, ELDEK & CO., 15, WATEKLOO PLACE, 

1872. 



$907 






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ADVERTISEMENT, 



In this- volume entitled "The Town," the reader will 
find an account of London, partly topographical and 
historical, but chiefly recalling the memories of remark- 
able characters and events associated with its streets 
between St. Paul's and St. James's ; being that part of 
the great metropolis which may be said to have consti- 
tuted " The Town " when that term was commonly 
used to designate London. 

The present edition comprises the entire contents, 
unabridged, with the Illustrations. 



CONTENTS 




INTRODUCTION. 

Different Impressions of London on different Passengers and Minds-* 
Extendibility of its Interest to all — London before the Deluge! — Its 
Origin according to the fabulous Writers and Poets — First historical 
Mention of it — Its Names — British, Kornan, Saxon, and Norman 
London — General Progress of the City and of Civilization — Kange 
of the Metropolis as it existed in the Time of Shakspeare and Bacon 
— Growth of the Streets and Suburbs during the later Keigns — 
" Merry London " and "Merry England" — Curious Assertion re- 
specting Trees in the City 1 



CHAPTER I. 
ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 

The Roman Temple of Diana : the first Christian Church — Old St. 
Paul's — Inigo Jones's Portico — Strange Usages of former Times — 
Encroachments on the Fabric of the Cathedral — Paul's Walkers — 
Dining with Duke Humphrey — Cacnolic Customs — The Boy-Bishop 
The Children of the Revels — Strange Ceremony on the Festivals of 
the Commemoration and Conversion of St. Paul — Ancient Tombs 
in the Cathedral — Scene between John of Gaunt and the Anti- 
Wicklifntes — Paul's Cross — The Folkmote — The Sermons — Jane 
Shore — See-Saw of Popery and Protestantism — London House— 
The Charnel— The Lollards' Tower— St. Paul's School— Desecra- 
tion of the Cathedral during the Commonwealth — The present 
Cathedral— Sir Christopher Wren— Statue of Queen Anne , 23 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IT. 

ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD^ 

The Church of St. Faith— Booksellers of the Churchyard— Mr. John- 
son's — Mr. Newberry's — Children's Books — Clerical Names of 
Streets near St. Paul's— Swift at the top of the Cathedral— Dr 
Johnson at St. Paul's — Paternoster Eow — Panyer's Alley — 
Stationers' Hall — Almanacks — Knight-Riders' Street — Armed 
Assemblies of the Citizens — Doctor's Commons — The Heralds' 
College— Coats of Arms — Ludgate— Story of Sir Stephen Forster 
— Prison of Ludgate — Wyatt's Kebellion — The Belle Sauvage Inn 
— Blackfriars — Shakspeare's Theatre — Accident at Blackfriars in 
1623 — Printing House Square — The Times — Baynard's Castle — 
Story of the Baron Fitzwalter — Richard HI. and Buckingham — 
Diana's Chamber — The Royal Wardrobe — Marriages in the Eleet — 
Fleet Ditch— The Dunciad 52 

CHAPTER III. 

FLEET STREET. 

Burning of the Pope — St. Bride's Steeple — Milton — Illuminated Clock 
— Melancholy End of Lovelace the Cavalier — Chatterton — Gene- 
rosity of Hardham, of Snuff Celebrity — Theatre in Dorset Garden 
— Richardson, his Habits and Character — Whitefriars, or Alsatia 
— The Temple — Its Monuments, Garden, &c. — Eminent names con- 
nected with it — Goldsmith dies there — Boswell's first Visit there to 
Johnson — Johnson and Madame de Boufflers — Bernard Lintot — 
Ben Jonson's Devil Tavern — Other Coffee-houses and Shops — 
Goldsmith and Temple-bar — Shire Lane, Bickerstaff, and the 
Deputation from the Country — The Kit-Kat Club — Mrs. Salmon — 
Isaac Walton — Cowley — Chancery Lane, Lord Strafford, and Ben 
Jonson — Serjeant's Inn — Clifford's Inn — The Rolls — Sir Joseph 
Jekyll — Church of St. Dunstan in the West — Dryden's House in 
Fetter Lane — Johnson, the Genius Loci of Fleet Street — His Way 
of Life — His Residence in Gough Square, Johnson's Court, and 
Bolt Court — Various Anecdotes of him connected with Fleet Street, 
and with his favourite Tavern, the Mitre • ... 84 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE STRAND. 

Ancient State of the Strand — Butcher Row — Death of Lee, the 
dramatic Poet — Johnson at anEating-House — Essex Street — House 
and History of the favourite Earl of Essex— Spenser's Visit there— 



CONTENTS. Vll 

Essex, General of the Parliament — Essex Head Club — Devereux 
Court — Grecian Coffee-House — Twining, the accomplished Scholar 
— St. Clement Danes — Clement's Inn — Falstaff and Shallow — 
Norfolk, Arundel, Surrey, and Howard Streets — Norfolk House — 
Essex's Ring and the Countess of Nottingham — William Penn — 
Birch — Dr. Brocklesby — Congreve, and his Will — Voltaire's Visit 
to him — Mrs. Bracegirdle — Tragical End of Mountford the Player — 
Ancient Cross — Maypole — New Church of St. Mary-le-Strand — Old 
Somerset House — Henrietta Maria and her Erench Household — 
Waller's Mishap at Somerset Stairs — New Somerset House — Royal 
Society, Antiquarian Society, and Royal Academy — Death of 
Dr. King — Exeter Street — Johnson's first Lodging in London — Art 
of living in London — Catherine Street — Unfortunate Women — 
Wimbledon House — Lyceum and Beef-steak Club — Exeter Change 
— Bed and Baltimore — The Savoy — Anecdotes of the Duchess of 
Albemarle — Beaufort Buildings — Lillie, the Perfumer — Aaron Hill 
— Fielding — Southampton Street — Cecil and Salisbury Streets — 
Durham House — Raleigh — Pennant on the Word Place or Palace — 
New Exchange — Don Pantaleon Sa — The White Milliner — Adelphi 
— Garrick and his Wife — Beauclerc — Society of Arts, and Mr. Barry 
— Bedford Street — George, Villiers, and Buckingham Streets — York 
House and Buildings — Squabble between the Spanish and French 
Ambassadors — Hungerford Market — Craven Street — Franklin — 
Northumberland House — Duplicity of Henry, Earl of Northampton 
_ — Violence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury — Percy, Bishop of 
Dromore — Pleasant mistake of Goldsmith . . . .131 

CHAPTER V. 

LINCOLN'S INN AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 

Lincoln's Inn — Ben Jonson's Bricklaying — Enactments against 
Beards — Oliver Cromwell, More, Hale, and other eminent Students 
of Lincoln's Inn — Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Square — Houses there 
built by Inigo Jones — Pepys's Admiration of the Comforts of Mr. 
Povey — Surgeons' College— Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe, and 
Lord Sandwich — Execution of the patriotic Lord Russell, with an 
Account of the Circumstances that led to and accompanied it, and 
some Remarks on his Character — Affecting Passages from the 
Letters of his Widow — Ludicrous Story connected with Newcastle 
House 192 

CHAPTER VI. 

Great Queen Street — Former fashionable Houses there — Lewis and 
Miss Pope, the Comedians— Martin Folkes— Sir Godfrey Kneller 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

and his Vanity— Dr. Eadcliffe— Lord Herbert of Cherbury— 
Nuisance of Whetstone Park— The Three Dukes and the Beadle — 
Rogues and Vagabonds in the Time of Charles II— Former Theatres 
in Vere Street and Portugal Street— First appear ance of Actresses 
— Infamous deception of one of them by the Earl of Oxford — 
Appearance of an avowed Impostor on the Stage — Anecdotes of the 
"Wits and fine Ladies of the Time of Charles, connected with the 
Theatre in this Quarter — Kynaston, Betterton, Nokes, Mrs. Barry, 
Mrs. Mountford, and other Performers — Eich — Joe Miller — Carey 
Street and Mrs. Chapone — Clare Market — History, and Specimens, 
of Orator Henley — Duke Street and Little Wild Street — Anecdotes 
of Dr. Franklin's Residence in those Streets while a Journeyman 
Printer . 225 

CHAPTER VII. 

DRURY LANE, AND THE TWO THEATRES IN DRURY 
LANE AND COVENT GARDEN. 

Craven House — Donne and his vision — Lord Craven and the Queen 
of Bohemia — Nell Gwynn — Drury Lane Theatre — Its antiquity* 
different eras, and rebuildings — The principal theatre of Dryden, 
Wycherley, Farquhar, Steele, Garrick, and Sheridan — Old Drury 
in the time of Charles H. — A visit to it — Pepys and his theatrical 
gossip, with notes — Hart and Mohun — Goodman — Nell Gwynn — 
Dramatic taste of that age — Booth — Artificial tragedy — Wilks and 
Cibber — Bullock and Penkethman — A Colonel enamoured of 
Cibber's wig — Mrs. Oldfield — Her singular position in society — Not 
the Flavia of the Tatler — Pope's account of her last words pro- 
bably not true — Declamatory acting — Lively account of Garrick 
and Quin by Mr. Cumberland — Improvement of stage costume — 
King — Mrs. Pritchard — Mrs. Clive — Mrs. Woffmgton — Covent 
Garden — Barry — Contradictory characters of him by Davies and 
Churchill — Macklin — Woodward — Pantomime — English taste in 
music — Cooke — Rise of actors and actresses in social rank — Im- 
provement of the audience — Dr. Johnston at the theatre — Churchill 
a great pit critic — His Rosciad — His picture of Mossop — Mrs. 
Jordan and Mr. Suett — Early recollections of a play-goer. 257 

CHAPTER VIII. 

COVENT GARDEN CONTINUED AND LEICESTER SQUARE. 

Bow Street once the Bond Street of London — Fashions at that time — 
Infamous frolic of Sir Charles Sedley and others — Wycherly and 
the Countess of Drogheda — Tonson the Bookseller — Fielding— 



CONTENTS. IX 

Kussell Street — Dryden beaten by hired ruffians in Rose Street — 
His Presidency at Will's Coffee-House — Character of that Place — 
Addison and Button's Coffee-House — Pope, Philips, and Garth — 
Armstrong — BoswelTs introduction to Johnson — The Hummums — 
Ghost Story there — Covent Garden — The Church — Car, Earl of 
Somerset — Butler, Southern, Eastcourt, Sir Eobert Strange — 
Macklin — Curious Dialogue with him when past a century — 
Dr. Walcot — Covent Garden Market — Story of Lord Sandwich, 
Hackman, and Miss Ray — Henrietta Street — Mrs. Clive — James 
Street — Partridge, the almanack-maker — Mysterious lady — King 
Street — Arne and his Eather — The four Indian Kings — 
Southampton Row — Maiden Lane — Voltaire — Long Acre and its 
Mug-Houses — Prior's resort there — Newport Street — St. Martin's 
Lane, and Leicester Square— Sir Joshua Reynolds — Hogarth — Sir 
Isaac Newton 306 



CHAPTER IX. 

CHARING CROSS AND WHITEHALL. 

Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church — Statue of Charles I. 
— Execution of Regicides — Ben Jonson — Wallingford House, now 
the Admiralty — Villiers, Duke of Buckingham ; Sir Walter Scott's 
Account of him — Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his Death — 
Charles's Horse a Satirist — Locket's Ordinary — Sir George Etherege 
— Prior and his Uncle's Tavern — Thomson — Spring Gardens — 
Mrs. Centlivre — Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c, formerly 
Hedge Lane— The Wits and the Bailiffs— Suffolk Street — Swift 
and Miss Vanhomrigh — Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occa- 
sioned — Scotland Yard — Pleasant Advertisement — Beau Eielding, 
and his Eccentricities — Vanbrugh — Desperate Adventure of Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury 355 

CHAPTER X. 
WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 

Regal Character of Whitehall — York Place — Personal and Moral 
Character of Wolsey — Comparison of him with Ins Master, Henry 
— His Pomp and Popularity — Humorous Account of his Flatterers 
by Sir Thomas More — Importance of his Hat — Cavendish's Account 
of his household State, his goings forth in Public, and his entertain - 

" meats of the King 382 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XL 

Henry the Eighth — His Person and Character — Modern Qualifications 
of it considered — Passages respecting him from Lingard, Sir Thomas 
Wyatt, and others — His additions to Whitehall — A Retrospect at 
Elizabeth — Court of James resumed — Its gross Habits — Letter of 
Sir John Harrington respecting them — James's Drunkenness — 
Testimonies of Welldon, Sully, and Koger Coke — Curious Omission 
in the Invective of Churchill the Poet — Welldon's Portrait of 
James — Buckingham, the Favourite — Prightful Story of Somerset 
— Masques — Banqueting House — Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson — 
Court of Charles the Pirst — Cromwell — Charles the Second— James 
the Second 395 

CHAPTER Xn. 

St. James's Park and its Associations — Unhealthiness of the Place 
and Neighbourhood — Leper Hospital of St. James — Henry the 
Eighth builds St. James's Palace and the Tilt-Yard — Original State 
and Progressive Character of the Park — Charles the Pirst — Crom- 
well — Charles the Second; his Walks, Amusements, and Mistresses 
The Mulberry Gardens — Swift, Prior, Bichardson, Beau Tibbs, 
Soldiers, and Syllabubs — Character of the Park at present — St. 
James's Palace during the Beigns of the Stuarts and two first 
Georges — Anecdotes of Lord Craven and Prince George of Den- 
mark — Characters of Queen Anne and of George the Pirst and 
Second — George the Pirst and his Carp — Lady Mary Wortley 
Montague and the Sack of Wheat — Horace Walpole's Portrait of 
George the Pirst — The Mistresses of that King and of his Son — 
Mistake of Lord Chesterfield — Queen Caroline's Ladies in Wait- 
ing — Miss Bellenden and the Guineas — George the Second's Rup- 
ture with his Father and with his Son — Character of that Son — 
Buckingham House — Sheffield and his Duchess — Character of 
Queen Charlotte — Advantages of Queen Victoria over her Prede- 
cessors . . . 9 Q * • • .431 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



ENGRAVED BY C. THURSTON THOMPSON, FROM DRAWINGS BY 
J. W. ARCHER AND C. T. THOMPSON. 



PAGE 

London from Southwark, before the Great Fire. From a 

Print by Hollar (Frontispiece) 

West Front of Old St. Paul's, with Inigo Jones's Portico . 26 
" Paul's Cross and Preaching there" . . .51 

Ludgate ....... 69 

Baynard's Castle, from the River, 1640 . . . .78 

Stone in Panyer Alley, marking the highest Ground in the City 83 
Interior of the Round Part of the Temple Church, previous 

to the recent Restorations . . . . 101 
House in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, the last Residence of 

Dr. Johnson, 1810 ...... 125 

Old Somerset House, from the River . . . 167 

The Savoy Palace, from the River .... 172 

Inigo Jones's Water Gate, York Stairs . . . 183 

Old Northumberland House, from the River. Temp. Charles I. 186 

Exeter Change as it appeared just before it was pulled down 192 

Newcastle House, N. W. corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1796 222 
Old Palace of Whitehall, from the River. Tern. Charles I., 

from a Print of the Period . . to face 225 
Old Houses in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 

1817 ....... 226 

The Theatre in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1810 236 



Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

pacjs 

Printing Press at which Franklin worked . . . 256 

Craven House, Drury Lane, 1800 .... 258 
Entrance Front of Old Drury Lane Theatre in Brydges 

Street, erected by Garrick .... 266 

Entrance to old Coven t Garden Theatre, 1794 . . 305 
Inigo Jones's Church and Covent Garden. Temp. James II. 

From a Print of the Period .... 325 
House in St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square, formerly the 

Kesidence of Sir Isaac Newton, 1810 . . . 354 

The Village of Charing. From Aggas's Map, 1578 . 356 
Scotland Yard, as it appeared in 1750. From a Print alter 

Paul Sandby ...... 374 

Old Gate of Whitehall Palace, designed by Holbein. From 

a Print by Hollar ..... 401 
The Banqueting House, Whitehall . . . .419 

St. James's Palace, 1650, from a Print by Hollar . . 435 



The Initial Letters and Tail-pieces designed by J. W. Archer and 
C. T. Thompson. (The Initial Letter to Chapter XII. represents 
the Conduit at St. James's.) 



THE TOWN. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Different impressions of London on different passengers and minds — 
Extendibility of its interest to all — London before the Deluge ! — 
Its origin according to the fabulous writers and poets — First his- 
torical mention of it — Its names — British, Roman, Saxon, and 
Norman London — General progress of the city and of civilisation — 
Range of the Metropolis as it existed in the time of Shakspeare and 
Bacon — Growth of the streets and suburbs during the later reigns — ■ 
" Merry London" and "Merry England"— Curious assertion respect- 
ing tree3 in the city. 

N one of those children's books which con- 
tain reading fit for the manliest, and 
which we have known to interest very 
grave and even great men, there is a 
pleasant chapter entitled Eyes and no 
Eyes, or the Art of Seeing* The two 
heroes of it come home successively from a 
walk in the same road, one of them having 
seen only a heath and a hill, and the meadows by the water- 
side, and therefore having seen nothing ; the other expatiating 
on his delightful ramble, because the heath presented him 
with curious birds, and the hill with the remains of a camp, 
and the meadows with reeds, and rats, and herons, and king- 
fishers, and sea-shells, and a man catching eels, and a glorious 
sunset. 

In like manner people may walk through a crowded city, 
and see nothing but the crowd. A man may go from Bond 
Street to Blackwall, and unless he has the luck to witness an 
accident, or get a knock from a porter's burden, may be con- 
scious, when he has returned, of nothing but the names of 
* See Evenings at Home, by Dr. Aikin and Mrs, Barbauld. 




2 DIFFERENT IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON. 

those two places, and of the mud through which he has passed. 
Nor is this to be attributed to dullness. He may, indeed, be 
dull. The eyes of his understanding may be like bad 
spectacles, which no brightening would enable to see much. 
But he may be only inattentive. Circumstances may have 
induced a want of curiosity, to which imagination itself shall 
contribute, if it has not been taught to use its eyes. This is 
particularly observable in childhood, when the love of novelty 
is strongest. A boy at the Charter House, or Christ Hospital, 
probably cares nothing for his neighbourhood, though stocked 
with a great deal that might entertain him. He has been too 
much accustomed to identify it with his schoolroom. We 
remember the time ourselves when the only thought we had 
in going through the metropolis was how to get out of it ; how 
to arrive, with our -best speed, at the beautiful vista of home 
and a pudding, which awaited us in the distance. And long 
after this we saw nothing in London, but the book-shops 
which have taught us better. 

" I have often," says Boswell, with the inspiration of his great 
London-loving friend upon him, " amused myself with thinking how- 
different a place London is to different people. They whose narrow 
minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular 
pursuit, view it only through that medium. A politician thinks of it 
merely as the seat of government in its different departments ; a 
grazier as a vast market for cattle ; a mercantile man as a place where 
a prodigious deal of business is done upon 'Change ; a dramatic 
enthusiast as the grand scene of theatrical entertainments ; a man of 
pleasure as an assemblage of taverns, &c. &c; but the intellectual 
man is struck with it as comprehending the whole of human life in 
all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible." 

It does not follow that the other persons whom Boswell 
speaks of are not, by nature, intelligent. The want of 
curiosity, in some, may be owing even to their affections and 
anxiety. They may think themselves bound to be occupied 
solely in what they are about. They have not been taught 
how to invigorate as well as to divert the mind, by taking a 
reasonable interest in the varieties of this astonishing world, 
of which the most artificial portions are still works of nature 
as well as art, and evidences of the hand of Him that made 
the soul and its endeavours. Boswell himself, with all his 
friend's assistance, and that of the tavern to boot, probably 
saw nothing in London of the times gone by — of all that rich 
aggregate of the past, which is one of the great treasures of 
knowledge ; and yet, by the same principle on which Boswell 
admired Dr. Johnson, he might have delighted in calling to 



EXTENDIBILITY OF ITS INTEREST. 3 

mind the metropolis of the wits of Queen Anne's time, and of 
the poets of Elizabeth ; might have longed to sit over their 
canary in Cornhill with Beaumont and Ben Jonson, and have 
thought that Surrey Street and Shire Lane had their merits, as 
well as the illustrious obscurity of Bolt Court. In Surrey 
Street lived Congreve; and Shire Lane, though nobody would 
think so to see it now, is eminent for the origin of the Kit- 
Kat Club (a host of wits and statesmen,) and for the recrea- 
tions of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., of Tatler celebrity, at his 
contubernium, the Trumpet. 

It may be said that the past is not in our possession ; that 
we are sure only of what we can realise, and that the present 
and future afford enough contemplation for any man. But 
those who argue thus, argue against their better instinct. 
We take an interest in all that we understand ; and in pro- 
portion as we enlarge our knowledge, enlarge, ad infinitum, 
the sphere of our sympathies. Tell the grazier, whom Boswell 
mentions, of a great grazier who lived before him — of Bake- 
well, who had an animal that produced him in one season 
the sum of eight hundred guineas ; or Fowler, whose horned 
cattle sold for a value equal to that of the fee-simple of his 
farm; or Elwes, the miser, who, after spending thousands at 
the gaming table, would haggle for a shilling at Smithfield ; 
and he will be curious to hear as much as you have to relate. 
Tell the mercantile man, in like manner, of G-resham, or 
Crisp, or the foundation of the Charter House by a merchant, 
and he will be equally attentive. And tell the man, par ex- 
cellence, of anything that concerns humanity, and he will be 
pleased to hear of Bakewell, or Crisp, or Boswell, or Bos- 
well's ancestor. Bakewell himself was a man of this sort. 
Boswell was proud of his ancestors, like most men that know 
who they were, whether their ancestors were persons to be 
proud of or not. The mere length of line flatters the brevity 
of existence. We must take care how we are proud of those 
who may not be fit to render us so ; but we may be allowed 
to be anxious to live as long as we can, whether in 
prospect or retrospect. Besides, the human mind, being a 
thing infinitely greater than the circumstances which confine 
and cabin it in its present mode of existence, seeks to extend 
itself on all sides, past, present, and to come. If it puts on 
wings angelical, and pitches itself into the grand obscurity 
of the future, it runs back also on the more visible line of 
the past. Even the present, which is the great business of 



4 LONDON BEFOEE THE DELUGE ! 

life, is chiefly great, inasmuch as it regards the interests of 
the many who are to come, and is built tip of the experiences 
of those who have gone by. The past is the heir-loom of 
the world. 

Now in no shape is any part of this treasure more visible 
to us, or more sticking, than in that cf a kTeat metropolis. 
The present is nov/here so present: we Gee tie latest marks 
of its hand. The past is nowhere so traceable: we discover, 
step by step, the successive abodes of its generations. The 
links that are wanting are supplied by history; nor perhaps 
is there a single spot in London in which the past is not 
visibly present to us, either in the shape of some old buildings 
or at least in the names of the streets ; or in which the absence 
of more tangible memorials may not be supplied by the anti- 
quary. In some parts of it we may go back through the 
whole English history, perhaps through the history of man, 
as we shall see presently when we speak of St. Paul's Church- 
3'ard, a place in which you may get the last new novel, and 
find remains of the ancient Britons and of the sea. There, 
also in the cathedral, lie painters, patriots, humanists, the 
greatest warriors and some of the best men; and there, in 
St. Paul's School, was educated England's epic poet, who 
hoped that his native country would never forget her pri- 
vilege of " teaching the nations how to live." Surely a man 
is more of a man, and does more justice to the faculties of 
which he is composed, whether for knowledge or entertain- 
ment, who thinks of all these things in crossing St. Paul's 
Churchyard, than if he saw nothing but the church itself, or 
the clock, or confined his admiration to the abundance of 
Brentford stages. 

Milton, who began a history of England, very properly 
touches upon the fabulous part of it ; not, as Dr. Johnson 
thought (who did not take the trouble of reading the second 
page), because he confounded it with the true, but, as he 
himself states, for the benefit of those who would know how 
to make use of it — the poets. In the same passage he alludes 
to those traces of a deluge of which we have just spoken, and 
to the enormous bones occasionally dug up, which, with the 
natural inclination ot a poet, he was willing to look upon as 
relics of a gigantic race of men. .Both of these evidences of 
a remote period have been discovered in London earth, and 
might be turned to grand account by a writer like himseiil 
It is curious to see the grounds on which truth and fiction 



ITS ORIGIN ACCORDING TO FABULOUS WRITERS. 5 

80 often meet, without knowing one another. The Oriental 
writers have an account of a race of pre- Adamite kings, not 
entirely human. It is supposed by some geologists, that there 
was a period before the creation of man, when creatures vaster 
than any now on dry land trampled the earth at will ; perhaps 
had faculties no longer to be found in connection with brute 
forms, and effaced, together with themselves, for a nobler 
experiment. We may indulge our fancy with supposing that, 
in those times, light itself, and the revolution of the seasons, 
may not have been exactly what they are now ; that some 
unknown monster, mammoth or behemoth, howled in the 
twilight over the ocean solitude now called London ; or (not 
to fancy him monstrous in nature as in form, for the hugest 
creatures of the geologist appear to have been mild and grami- 
nivorous), that the site of our metropolis was occupied with 
the gigantic herd of some more gigantic spirit, all good of 
their kind, but not capable of enough ultimate good to be 
permitted to last. However, we only glance at these specu- 
lative matters, and leave them. Neither shall we say any- 
thing of the more modern elephant, who may have recreated 
himself some thousands of years ago on the site of the Chapter 
Coffee House ; or of the crocodile, who may have snapped at 
some remote ancestor of a fishmonger in the valley of Dow- 
gate. 

By the fabulous writers, London was called Troynovant or 
New Troy, and was said to have been founded by Brutus, 
great-grandson of iEneas, from whom the country was called 
Brutain, or Britain. 

For noble Britons sprong from Trojans bold, 

And Troynovant was built of old Troye's ashes cold. 

(This is one of Spenser's fine old lingering lines, in which he 
seems to dwell on a fable till he believes it.) Brutus, having 
the misfortune to kill his father, fled from his native country 
into Greece, where he set free a multitude of Trojans, captives 
to King Pandrasus, whose daughter he espoused. He left 
Greece with a numerous flotilla, and came to an island called 
Legrecia, where there was a temple of Diana. To Diana he 
offered sacrifice, and prayed her to direct his course. The 
prayer, and the goddess's reply, as told in Latin by Gildas, 
have received a lustre from the hand of Milton. He gives 
us the following translation of them in his historical frag- 
ment: — 



FIRST HISTORICAL MENTION OF LONDON. 

" Diva potens nemorum : " 

" Goddess of Shades, and Huntress, who at will 
Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep, 
On thy third reign, the earth, look now ; and tell 
What land, what seat of rest, thou bidst me seek ; 
"What certain seat, where I may worship thee, 
For aye, with temples to wed, and virgin quires." 

"To whom, sleeping before the altar," says the poet, "Diana in a 
vision that night, thus answered : — 

" Brute, sub occasum solis : " 

" Brutus, far to the west, in th' ocean wide, 
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, 
Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old : 
Now void, it fits thy people. Thither bend 
Thy course : there shalt thou find a lasting seat ; 
There to thy sons another Troy shall rise, 
And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded reign 
Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold."* 

According to Spenser, Brutus did not find England cleared 
of the giants. He had to conquer them. But we shall speak 
of those personages when we come before their illustrious 
representatives in Guildhall. 

This fiction of Troynovant, or new Troy, appears to have 
arisen from the word Trinobantes in Ceesar, a name given by 
the historian to the inhabitants of a district which included 
the London banks of the Thames. The oldest mention of the 
metropolis is supposed to be found in that writer, under the 
appellation of Civitas Trinobantwn, the city of the Trinobantes; 
though some are of opinion that by civitas he only meant their 
government or community. Be this as it may, a city of the 
Britons, in Caesar's time, was nothing either for truth or 
fiction to boast of, having been, as he describes it, a mere 
spot hollowed out of the woods, and defended by a ditch and 
a rampart. 

We have no reason to believe that the first germ of London 
was anything greater than this. Milton supposes that so many 
traditions of old British kings could not have been handed 
down without a foundation in truth ; and the classical origin 
of London, though rejected by himself, was not only firmly 
believed by people in general as late as the reign of Henry 
the Sixth (to whom it was quoted in a public document), but 
was maintained by professed antiquaries, — Leland among 
them.")" It is probable enough that, before Caesar's time, the 

* History of England, 4to. 1670, p. 11. 
f We learn this from Selden's notes to the Polyolbion of Drayton, 



ITS NAMES. 7 

affairs of the country may have been in a better situation 
than he found them ; and it is possible that something may 
have once stood on the site of London, which stood there no 
longer. But this may be said of every other place on the 
globe ; and as there is nothing authentic to show for it, we 
must be content to take our ancestors as we find them. In 
truth, nothing is known with certainty of the origin of London, 
not even of its name. The first time we hear either of the 
city or its apellation is in Tacitus, who calls it Londinium. 
The following list, taken principally from Camden, comprises, 
we believe, all the names by which it has been called. We 
dwell somewhat on this point, because we conclude the reader 
will be pleased to see by how many aliases his old acquaintance 
has been known. 

Troja Nova, Troynovant, or New Troy. 

Tre-novant, or the New City, (a mixture of Latin and 
Cornish). 

Dian Belin, or the City of Diana. 

Caer Ludd, or the City of Ludd. — These are the names 
given by the fabulous writers, chiefly Welsh. 

Londinium. — Tacitus, Ptolemy, Antoninus. 

Lundinium. — Ammianus Marcellinus. 

Longidinium. 

Lindonium, (Aivdoviov). — Stephanus in his Dictionary. 

Lundonia. — Bede. 

Augusta. — The complimentary title granted to it under 
Valentinian, as was customary with flourishing foreign estab- 
lishments. 

Lundenbyrig. 

Lundenberig. 

Lundenberk. 

Lundenburg. 

Lundenwic, or wye. 

Lundenceastre (that is, London-castrum or camp). 

Lundunes. 

Lundene, or Lundenne. 

Lundone. — Saxon names. Lundenceastre is Alfred the 
Great's translation of the Lundonia of Bede. 

Luddestun. 

Ludstoune. — Saxon translations of the Caer Ludd of the 
Welsh. 

Londres. — French. 

Londra. — Italian. Ths letter r in these words is curious. 



8 DERIVATION OF LONDON. 

It seems to represent the berig or burgh of the Saxons ; quasi 
Londrig, from Londonberig ; in which ease Londres would 
mean London-borough. 

The disputes upon the derivation of the word London have 
been numerous. In the present day, the question seems to 
be, whether it originated in Celtic British, that is, in Welsh, 
and signified " a city on a lake," or in Belgic British (old 
German), and meant " a city in a grove." The latest author 
who has handled the subject inclines to the latter opinion.* 
Mr. Pennant being a Celt, was for the " city on a lake," the 
Thames in the early periods of British history having formed 
a considerable expanse of water near the site of the present 
metropolis. Llyn-Din is Lake-City, and Lun-Den Grove-City. 
Erasmus, on the strength of those affinities between Greek and 
Welsh, which can be found between most languages, fetched 
the word from Lindus, a city of Ehodes ; Somner, the anti- 
quary, derived it from Llawn, full, and Dyn, man, implying a 
great concourse of people ; another antiquary, from Lugdus, 
a Celtic prince ; Maitland from Lon, a plain, and Dun or 
Don, a hill ; another, we know not who, referred to by the 
same author, from a word signifying a ship and a hill j ; 
Camden from Llong-Dinas, a City of Ships ; and Selden, 
" seeing conjecture is free,"| was for deriving it from Llan- 
Dien, or the temple of Diana, for reasons which will appear 
presently. Pennant thinks that London might have been 
called Lake- City first, and Ship-City afterwards. The opinion 
of the editor of the Picture of London seems most plausible 
— that Lun-Den, or Grove-City was the name, because it is 
compounded of Belgic British, which, according to Caesar, 
must have been the language of the district ; and he adds, 
that the name is still common in Scandinavia. § It may be 
argued, that London might have existed as a fortress on a lake 
before the arrival of settlers from Belgium ; and that Grove- 
City could not have been so distinguishing a characteristic of 
the place as Lake-City, because wood was a great deal more 
abundant than water. On the other hand, all the rivers at 
that time were probably more or less given to overflowing. 

* Picture of London, 1824, p. 3. 

f These etymologies are to be found in Maitland's History and 
Survey of London. Fol. 1756. Vol. i. Book i. 

$ In the notes to Drayton's Polyolbion, Song viii. 

§ There is a Lunden in Sweden, mentioned by Maitland, vol. i. ubi 
sup. It is tbe capital of the province of Schonen. Another town of 
the name is in Danish Holstein. 



BRITISH LONDON. 9 

Grove-City might have been the final name, though Lake- 
City was the first ; and the propensity to name places from 
trees, is still evident in our numerous Woot-tons, or Wood- 
towns, Wood-fords, Woodlands, &c. But of all disputes, those 
upon etymology appear the most hopeless. Perhaps the word 
itself was not originally what we take it to be. Who would 
suspect the word wig to come from peruke ; jour from dies ; 
uncle from avus ; or that Kensington should have been cor- 
rupted by the despairing organs of a foreigner, into Inhim- 
thorpf* 

Whether London commenced with a spot cleared out in the 
woods by settlers from Holland, (Gallic Belgium,) as conjec- 
ture might imply from Csesar, or whether the germ of it arose 
with the aboriginal inhabitants, we may conclude safely 
enough with Pennant, that it existed in some shape or other 
in Caesar's time. *■-■■ 

" It stood," says he, " in such a situation as the Britains would 
select, according to the rule they established. An immense forest 
originally extended to the river side, and even as late as the reign of 
Henry II. covered the northern neighbourhood of the city, and was 
filled with various species of beasts of chase. It was defended natu- 
rally by fosses, one formed by the creek which ran along Fleet Ditch ; 
the other, afterwards known by that of Walbrook. The south side 
was guarded by the Thames ; the north they might think sufficiently 
protected by the adjacent forest." f 

- In this place, then, seated on their hill, (probably that on 
which St. Paul's Cathedral stands, as it is the highest in 1/ 
London,) and gradually exchanging their burrows in the 
ground for huts of wicker and clay, we are to picture to our- 
selves our metropolitan ancestors, half-naked, rude in their 
manners, ignorant, violent, vindictive, subject to all the half- 
reasoning impulses — their bodies tattooed like South Sea 
Islanders — but brave, hospitable, patriotic, anxious for 
esteem — in short, like other semi -barbarians, exhibiting 
energies which they did not yet know how turn to account, 
but possessing, like all human beings, the germs of the noblest 

* " We have one word," says Dr. Pegge, " which has not a single 
letter of its original, for of the French peruke, we got periwig, now 
abbreviated to wig. Earwig comes from eruca, as Dr. Wallis observes, 
Anonymiana, p. 56. The French word jour (day) comes from dies, 
through diurnus, diurno, giorno; so giornale, journal. Uncle is from 
avus, through avunculus. For Inhimthorpe, and other impossibilities, 
see Cosmo the Third's Travels through England, in the reign of 
Charles II." 

f Pennant's London, third edition, 4to., p. 3. 



10 BKITISH LONDON. 

capabilities. The accounts given of them by Caesar and other 
ancient writers appear to be inconsistent, perhaps because we 
do not enough consider the inconsistencies of our own man- 
ners. According to their statements, the Britons had found 
out the art of making chariots of war, and yet had not learnt 
how to convert grain into flour, or to make a solid substance 
of milk. They rode, as it were, in their coaches, and yet had 
i/not arrived at the dignity of oread and cheese. Probably 
their chariots were magnified both in number and construc- 
tion. The scythes which modern fancy has turned into 
proper haymaking sabres, and which some antiquaries have 
found so convenient for cutting through " a woody country''' 
(a strange way of keeping them sharp), may have been 
nothing but spikes. We know not so easily what to say to 
the bread and cheese, except that in more knowing times 
people are not always found very ready to improve upon old 
habits, even with reasons staring them in the face ; though, 
on the other hand, lest habits should be thought older than 
they are, and reformers be too impatient, it is worth while to 
consider, not how long, but how short, a period has elapsed 
(considering what a little thing a few centuries are in the 
progress of time) since in the very spot where a Briton sat 
half-naked and savage, unpossessed of a loaf or a piece of 
cheese, are to be found gathered together all the luxuries of 
the globe. Fancy the soul of an ancient Briton visiting his 
old ground in St. Paul's Churchyard, and hardly staring more 
at the church and houses, than at the bread in the baker's 
window, and the magic leaves in that of the bookseller. In 
one respect, an ancient City-Briton differed toto ccelo with a 
modern. He would not eat goose! He had a superstition 
against it. 

London, in Cassar's time, was most probably a City of 
Ships ; that is to say it traded with Gaul, and had a number 
of boats on its marshy river. Caesar's pretence for invading 
England, was, that it was too good a provider for Gaul, and 
rendered his conquest of that country difficult. But it is 
doubtful whether he ever beheld or even alludes to the infant 
metropolis. His countrymen are supposed to have first taken 
possession of it about a hundred years afterwards, in the reign 
of Claudius. They had heard of a pearl-fishery, says Gibbon. 
At all events they found oysters ; for Sandwich (Kutupium) 
became famous with them for that luxury. 

It is not our design, in this Introduction, to give anything 



ROMAN RELICS. 1.1 

more than a sketch of the rise and growth of the metropolis ; 
we shall leave the rest to be gathered as we proceed. Our 
intention is to go through London, quarter by quarter, and to 
notice the memorials as they arise ; a plan, which, compared 
with others (at least if we are to judge of the effect which it 
has had on ourselves), seems to possess something of the 
superiority of sight over hearsay. When we read of events 
in their ordinary train, we pitch ourselves with difficulty into 
the scenes of action — sometimes wholly omit to do so ; and 
there is a want of life and presence in them accordingly. 
When we are placed in the scenes themselves, and told to 
look about us — such and such a thing having happened in 
that house — this street being one in which another famous 
adventure took place, and that old mansion having been the 
dwelling of wit or beauty, we find ourselves comparatively at 
home, and enjoy the probability and the spectacle twice as 
much. We feel (especially if we are personally conversant 
with the spot) as if Shakspeare and Milton, Pope, Gay, and 
Arbuthnot, the club at the Mermaid, and the beauties at the 
court of White-Hall, were our next-door neighbours. 

We shall take the reader, then, as speedily as possible 
among the quarters alluded to, and trouble him very little 
beforehand with dry abstracts and chronologies, or with races 
of men almost as uninteresting. The most patriotic reader 
of our history feels that he cares very little for his ancestors 
the Britons ; of whom almost all he knows is, that they painted 
their skins, and made war in chariots. Nor do the Romans 
in England interest us more. They are men in helmets and 
short skirts, who have left us no memorial but a road or two, 

l/ and an iron name. That is all that we know of them, and 
we care accordingly. Perhaps the Saxons, after having 
destroyed the Roman architecture as much as possible, and 
repented of it, took their own from what had survived. The 
greatest relic of Caesar's countrymen in the metropolis was 
the piece of wall which ran lately south of Moorfields, in a 
street still designated as London Wall. The Eomans had a 
vast material genius, not so intellectual as that of the Greeks, 
nor so calculated to move the world ultimately, but highly 
fitted to prepare the way for better impressions, by showing 

v what the hand could perform ; and as they built their wall 
in thoir usual giant style of solidity, it remained a long while 
to testify their magnificence. Small relics of it are yet to be 
seen in Little Bridge Street, behind Ludgate Hill; on the 



12 BRITISH, ROMAN, SAXON, AND NORMAN LONDON. 

north of Bull-and-Mouth Street, between that street and St. 
Botolph's Churchyard ; and on the south side of the Church- 
yard of Cripplegate. There was another in the garden of 
Stationer's Hall, but it has been blocked up. 

Ancient British London was a mere space in the woods, 
open towards the river, and presenting circular cottages on 
the hill and slope, and a few boats on the water. As it 
increased, the cottages grew more numerous, and commerce 
increased the number of sails. 

Eoman London was British London, interspersed with the 
better dwellings of the conquerors, and surrounded by a wall. 
It extended from Ludgate to the Tower, and from the river to 
the back of Cheapside. 

Saxon London was Roman London, despoiled, but retaining 
the wall, and ultimately growing civilized with Christianity, 
and richer in commerce. The first humble cathedral church 
then arose, where the present one now stands. 

Norman London was Saxon and Roman London, greatly 
improved, thickened with many houses, adorned with palaces 
of princes and princely bishops, sounding Avith minstrelsy, 
and glittering with the gorgeous pastimes of knighthood. 
This was its state through the Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet 
reigns. The friar then walked the streets in his cowl (Chaucer 
is said to have beaten one in Fleet Street), and the knights 
rode with trumpets in gaudy colours to their tournaments in 
Smithfield. 

In the time of Edward the First, houses were still built of 
wood, and roofed with straw, sometimes even with reeds, 
which gave rise to numerous fires. The fires brought the 
brooks in request; and an importance which has since been 
swallowed up in the advancement of science, was then given 
to the River of Wells (Bagnigge, Sadler's, and Clerkenwell), 
to the Old Bourne (the origin of the name of Holborn,) to 
the little river Fleet, the Wall-brook, and the brook Lang- 
bourne, which last still gives its name to a ward. The 
conduits, which were large leaden cisterns, twenty in number, 
were under the special care of the lord mayor and aldermen, 
who, after visiting them on horseback on the eighteenth of 
September, " hunted a hare before dinner, and a fox after it, 
in the Fields near St. Giles's."* Hours, and after-dinner 
pursuits, must have altered marvellously since those days, 
and the body of aldermen with them. 

* Picture of London, p. 12 



GENERAL PROGRESS OE THE CITY. 13 

It was not till the reign of Henry the Fifth, that the city 
was lighted at night. The illumination was with lanterns, 
slung over the street with wisps of rope or hay. Under 
Edward the Fourth we first hear of brick houses ; and in 
Henry the Eighth's time of pavement in the middle of the 
streets. The general aspect of London then experienced a 
remarkable change, in consequence of the dissolution of 
religious houses ; the city, from the great number of them, 
having hitherto had the appearance "of a monastic, rather 
than a commercial metropolis."* The monk then ceased to 
walk, and the gallant London apprentice became more riotous. 
London, however, was still in a wretched condition, compared 
with what it is now. The streets, which had been impassable 
from mud, were often rendered so with filth and offal; and 
its homeliest wants being neglected, and the houses almost 
meeting at top, with heavy signs lumbering and filling up the 
inferior spaces, the metropolis was subject to plagues as well 
as fires. Nor was the interior of the houses better regarded. 
The people seemed to cultivate the plague. " The floors," 
says Erasmus, " are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, 
which are occasionally renewed ; but underneath lies unmo- 
lested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments of fish, 
&c , &c, and everything that is nasty." f The modern 
Englishman piques himself on his cleanliness, but he should 
do it modestly, considering what his ancestors could do ; and 
he should do it not half so much as he does, considering what 
he still leaves undone. It is the disgrace of the city of 
London irr particular, that it still continues to be uncleanly, 
except in externals, and even to resist the efforts of the 
benevolent to purify it. But time and circumstance ultimately 
force people to improve. It was plague and fire that first 
taught the Londoners to build their city better. We hope 
the authorities will reflect upon this ; and not wait for cholera 
to complete the lesson. 

Erasmus wrote in the time of Henry the Eighth, when the 
civil wars had terminated in a voluptuous security, and when 
the pride of the court and nobility was at its height. Knight- 
hood was becoming rather a show than a substance ; and the 
changes in religion, the dissolution of the monasteries, and 

* Picture of London, p. 14. For a larger account of this and other 
matters briefly touched upon in the present introduction, see Brayley's 
London and Middlesex, vol. i. The spirit of them, however, will 
appear in our work, together with particulars hitherto unnoticed, 

f Id. p. 13. 



14 RANGE OF THE METROPOLIS. 

above all, the permission to read the Bible, set men thinking, 
and identified history in future with the progress of the general 
mind. Opinion, accidentally set free by a tyrant, was never to 
be put down, though tyranny tried never so hard. Poetry 
revived in the person of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; and, 
by a maturity natural to the first unsophisticated efforts of 
imagination, it came to its height in the next age with Shaks- 
peare. The monasteries being dissolved, London was become 
/ entirely the commercial city it has remained ever since, though 
it still abounded with noblemen's mansions, and did so till a 
much later period. There were some in the time of Charles 
the Second. The manners of the citizens under Henry the 
Eighth were still rude and riotous, but cheerful ; and manly 
exercises were much cultivated. Henry was so pleased with 
one of the city archers, that he mock-heroically created him 
Duke of Shoreditch ; upon which there arose a whole suburb 
peerage of Marquisses of Hogsdon and Islington, Pancras, &c. 

In Elizabeth's time the London houses were still mostly of 
wood. We see remains of them in the Strand and Fleet Street, 
and in various parts of the city. They are like houses built 
of cards, one story projecting over the other; but unless there 
is something in the art of building, which may in future dis- 
pense with solidity, the modern houses will hardly be as lasting. 
People in the old ones could at least dance and make merry. 
Builders in former times did not spare their materials, nor 
introduce clauses in their leases against a jig. We fancy 
Elizabeth hearing of a builder who should introduce such a 
proviso against the health and merriment of her buxom sub- 
jects, and sending to him, with a good round oath, to take a 
little less care of his purse, and more of his own neck. 

In this age, ever worthy of honour and gratitude, the illus- 
trious Bacon set free the hands of knowledge, which Aristotle 
had chained up, and put into them the touchstone of experi- 
ment, the mighty mover of the ages to come. This was the 
great age, also, of English poetry and the drama. Former 
manners and opinions now began to be seen only on the 
stage ; intellect silently gave a man a rank in society he 
never enjoyed before; and nobles and men of letters mixed 
together in clubs. People now also began to speculate on 
government, as well as religion ; and the first evidences of 
that unsatisfied argumentative spirit appeared, which pro- 
duced the downfall of the succeeding dynasty, and ultimately 
the Revolution, and all that we now enjoy. 



IN THE TIME OF SHAKSPEARE AND BACON. 15 

The governments of Elizabeth and James, fearing that the 
greater the concourse the worse would be the consequences of 
sickness, and secretly apprehensive, no doubt, of the growth 
of large and intellectual bodies of men near their head- 
quarters, did all in their power to confine the metropolis to 
its then limits, but in vain. Despotism itself, even in its 
mildest shape, cannot prevail against the spirit of an age ; and 
Bacon was at that minute foreseeing the knowledge that was 
to quicken, increase, and elevate human intercourse, by means 
of the growth of commerce. Houses and streets grew then 
as they do now, not so quickly indeed, but equally to the 
astonishment of their inhabitants ; and the latter had reason 
to congratulate themselves on a pavement to walk upon ; a 
luxury for which a lively Parisian, not half a century ago, is 
said to have gone down on his knees, when he came into 
England, thanking God that there was a country " in which 
some regard was shown to foot passengers." In Charles the 
First's reign the suburbs of Westminster and Spitalfields 
were greatly enlarged, and the foundation of Covent Garden 
was commenced, as it now stands. Symptoms of a future 
neighbourhood appeared also in Leicester Fields, though the 
place continued to be what the name imports, as late as the 
beginning of the last century. The progress of building 
received a check from the Civil Wars, but only to revive 
with new spirit ; and the great Fire — which was a great 
blessing — swallowed up at once both the deformity and the 
disease of old times, by widening the streets, and putting an 
end to the liability to pestilence. London has not had a 
"plague" since, unless it be indigestion ; which, however, is 
the great disease of modern sedentary times, and will never be 
got rid of, till we grow mental enough to have more respect 
for our bodies. 

Towards the end of the reign of Charles the Second the 
metropolis began to increase in the direction of Holborn; 
Hatton Garden, Brook, and Greville Streets were built ; and 
Ormond Street ran towards the fields. In this and the 
following reigns the mansion-houses of the nobility on the 
river side began to give way to the private houses and 
streets, still retaining the name of the Strand. Pall Mall 
and St. James's increased also ; and Soho Square, on its first 
building, received the name of the Duke of Monmouth. But 
particulars of that nature will be better noticed in the body 
of our work. The nobility, gentry, and the wits, were now 



16 GROWTH DURING THE LATER REIGNS. 

mixed up together. City taverns were still frequented by 
them; and city marriages began to be sought after, to mend 
the fortunes of the debauched cavaliers. Elizabeth's suc- 
cessor, James, was the first king who entered into anything 
like domestic familiarity with the monied men of the city. 
Charles the Second took "t'other bottle" with them (see the 
Spectator) ; and Lord Rochester played the buffoon on Tower 
Hill, as a quack doctor. 

The streets about St. Martin's-in-the-fields and St. Giles's- 
in-the-fields, those of Clerkenwell, the neighbourhood of Old 
Street and Shoreditch, Marlborough Street, Soho, &c, succes- 
sively arose in the time of Queen Anne, as well as a good 
portion of Holborn, beginning from Brook Street and in- 
cluding the neighbourhood of Bedford Street and Red Lion 
Square. St. Paul's, too, was completed as it now stands. 
This, and the succeeding times of the Hanover succession, 
were the times of Whig and Tory, of the principal wit-poets, 
of writers upon domestic manners, and of what may be called 
an ambition of good sense and reason, — " sense " being the 
favourite term in books, as " wit " had been in the age of 
Charles. Clubs were multiplied ad infinitum by the more 
harmless civil wars between Whig and Tory ; and ale and 
beer brought the middle classes together, as wine did the rich. 
Mug-house clubs abounded in Long Acre, Cheapside, &c. ; 
" where gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen used to meet in 
a great room, seldom under a hundred," if we are to believe 
the Journey through England, in the year 1724. 

At the commencement of the last century the village of 
St. Mary-le-bone was almost a mile distant from any part of 
London ; the nearest street being Old Bond Street, which 
scarcely extended to the present Clifford Street. Soon after 
the accession of George the First, New Bond Street arose, 
with others in the immediate neighbourhood, and the 
houses in Berkeley Square and its vicinity. Hanover Square 
and Cavendish Square were open fields in the year 1716. 
They were built about the beginning of the reign of George 
the Second, at which time the houses arose on the north 
side of Oxford Street, which then first took the name. The 
neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, and Oxford Market, 
Holies Street, Margaret Street, Vere Street, &c, are of the 
same date ; and the grounds for Harley, Wigmore, and 
Mortimer Streets were laid out ; the village and church of 
Mary-le-bone being still separated from them all by fields. 



GROWTH OF THE SUBURBS. 17 

At the same period the legislature ordered the erection of the 
three parishes of St. George's Bloomsbury, St. Anne's Lime- 
house, and St. Paul's Deptford, London having, at that time, 
extended further in the last quarter than any other, by reason 
of the trade on the river. 

So late, nevertheless, as this period, Fleet Ditch was a 
sluggish, foul stream, open as far as Holborn Bridge, and admit- 
ting small vessels for trade, coal barges, &c. It had become 
such a nuisance, that it was now arched over, and the late Fleet 
Market soon appeared on the covering. About the year 1737, 
the west end of the town was improved by the addition of 
Grosvenor Square and its neighbourhood. 

The increase of the metropolis on all sides was in propor- 
tion to the length of the reign of George the Third. The 
space between Mary-le-bone was filled in ; Southwark became 
a mass of houses united with Westminster ; and new towns 
rather than suburbs, appeared in all quarters ; some with the 
names of towns, as Camden and Somers Town ; to which 
have been added, since the death of that prince, Portland 
Town ; a good half of Paddington, now joined with Kilburn ; 
a world of new streets between Paddington and Notting Hill ; 
Notting Hill itself including Shepherd's Bush ; another new 
world of streets, called Belgravia, between Knightsbridge and 
Pimlico ; others out by Peckham and Camberwell, including 
Clapham and Norwood ; and others again on the east, reach- 
ing as far as the skirts of Epping Forest ! Indeed, every 
village which was in the immediate and even the remote 
neighbourhood of London, and was quite distinct from one 
another at the beginning of the reign of George the Third, 
is now almost, if not quite, joined with it, including Highgate 
and Hampstead themselves on the north, Norwood on the 
south, Turnham Green and Parson's Green on the west, and 
Laytonstone on the east. The whole of this enormous mass 
of houses now presents us, more or less, in all quarters, with 
handsome streets, and even with squares ; and the two sides 
of the river are united by a series of noble bridges. New 
churches also have risen in every direction ; and though the 
architecture is none of the best, they contribute to a general 
air of neatness and freshness, which the increase of education 
and politeness promises to keep up. There is an old prophecy 
that Hampstead is to be in the middle of London ; a pheno- 
menon that London would really seem inclined to bring about. 
But a metropolis must stop somewhere ; and the very causes 

c 



18 OMNIPOTENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION. 

of its growth (we mean the facilities of carriage, &c.) will 
ultimately, perhaps sooner than is looked for, prevent it. 
^Railways now allow numbers to reside at a distance, who a 
few years ago would have remained in London. 

Ancient British London is conjectured to have been about 
a mile long, and half a mile wide. Modern London occupies 
an area of above eighteen square miles ; and all this space, 
deducting not quite two miles for the river, is filled up with 
houses and public buildings, with a population of perhaps 
two million of souls, and with riches from all parts of the 
globe. In this respect London may justly be said to be the 
" metropolis of the world ;" though Paris has the advance of 
it in some others. 

During the reign of George the Third, the whole mind of 
Europe was shaken up more vehemently than ever by the 
French Eevolution ; and, as the consequence is after such 
tempestuous innovations, men began to look about them, to 
see what had stood the test of it, and how they might improve 
their condition still farther. After a great many disputes, 
natural on all sides, and a singular proof of the omnipotence 
of public opinion over the most extraordinary military power, 
it may be safely asserted, that the essence of that opinion, or 
the intellectual part of it is secretly acknowledged as the 
great regulator of society, even by those who appear to regu- 
late it themselves ; and who never show their sense to more 
advantage, than when they lead where they must have 
followed. This is the most remarkable era, perhaps, in the 
history of mankind ; and experiment, and promise, are of a 
piece with it. Everybody is now more or less educated ; the 
extension of the graces of life does away with sordidness, and 
teaches people that men do not live by "bread alone;" there 
is a reading public, let the jealousies of secluded scholarship 
say what they will ; the mighty hands which Bacon set free 
are in full action ; the Press reports and assists them, and 
utters a thousand voices daily, not to be put an end to by 
anything short of a convulsion of the globe. Time and 
space themselves are comparatively annihilated by the inven- 
tions of the steam-carriage and the electric telegraph. The 
corn-laws have gone, opening still wider the prospects of 
mankind ; and improvements may be looked for in society, so 
much to the benefit of all classes, that the most reasonable 
observer will decline stating the amount of his expectations, 
lest they should be thought as extravagant, as old times 



"MERRY LONDON," AND " MERRY ENGLAND." 19 

would have thought the telegraph just mentioned, or the 
publication of those thousands of volumes a day called News- 
papers.* 

A word or two more on health, and our modes of living. 
London was once called " Merry London," the metropolis of 
" Merry England." The word did not imply exclusively 
what it does now. Chaucer talks of the " merry organ at 
the mass." But it appears to have had a signification still 
more desirable — to have meant the best condition in which 
anything could be found, with cheerfulness for the result. 
Gallant soldiers were "merry men." Favourable weather 
was " merry." And London was " merry," because its in- 
habitants were not only rich, but healthy and robust. They 
had sports infinite, up to the time of the Commonwealth — 
races and wrestlings, archery, quoits, tennis, foot-ball, hurl- 
ing, &c. Their May-day was worthy of the burst of the 
season ; not a man was left behind out of the fields, if he 
could help it; their apprentices piqued themselves on their 
stout arms, and not on their milliners' faces ; their nobility 
shook off the gout in tilts and tournaments ; their Christmas 
closed the year with a joviality which brought the very trees 
in-doors to crown their cups with, and which promised 
admirably for the year that was to come. In everything 
they did, there was a reference to Nature and her works, as 
if nothing should make them forget her ; and a gallant re- 
cognition of the duties of health and strength, as the foundation 
of their very right to be fathers. 

We are aware of the drawbacks that accompanied this 
physical wisdom ; of the comparative ignorance of the people, 
and the abuses they suffered accordingly; of slaveries, and 
star-chambers; of plagues, fires, and civil wars; of the burnings 
in Smithneld; of the murderings of wretched old women, 
supposed to be witches ; and of other domestic superstitions, 
of which we are, perhaps, now-a-days unable to calculate 
the mischief. Surely we desire to see no more of them ; and 
we are heartily willing that the same progress of thought 
which has swept them away, should have done us a dis- 
service meanwhile^ which more thinking shall put an end to. 

* Since this paragraph was written, the -wonderful events have 
taken place in Prance, which have so agitated the whole of Europe, 
and which promise to open a new epoch in human history. May all 
benefit from them, as we believe all may, without real injury to any 
one! 

C2 



20 "MERRY LONDON," AND "MERRY ENGLAND." 

Far are we from desiring to go back. But we would hasten 
the time when reflection shall recover the good for us, with- 
out bringing back the evil. And this surely it may. This 
it must — for real knowledge could not make its progress with- 
out it. The labour would not end in the reward. It has 
been supposed, that the poorer orders cannot have their 
enjoyments again — cannot have their old Christmas, for 
example, unless the rich supply them with the means of en- 
joyment, and so renew their charter of dependence. But this 
is to suppose that times are not changing in other respects, 
and that knowledge is not spreading. Riches and poverty 
themselves are modified by the progress of society; means 
are increased, however, to their apparent detriment at first, 
among the poor; and the knowledge of enjoyment becomes 
no longer confined to the rich, any more than the enjoyment 
of knowledge. Men may surely learn how to stouten their 
legs, as well as to improve their stockings. Now of all plea- 
sures, those are the cheapest which are bought of nature — 
such as air and exercise, and manly sports ; and though we 
allow that the poor, in order to relish them, must be free from 
the melancholier states of poverty, it is desirable meanwhile that 
the dispensers of knowledge should assist in hastening more 
cheerful times by preparing for them, and that all classes should 
be told how much the cultivation of their bodily health increases 
the ability, both of rich and poor, to get out of their troubles. 
You may steep a gipsey in trouble, and he shall issue out of it 
laughing. It would not be easy to do this with an epicurean, or 
a fund-holder, or with one of the parish poor ; but neither need 
any one despair; for neither can the might of mechanical inven- 
tions, nor the greater might of opinion, be put down, whether in 
their first awful issuing forth, or in their final beneficence. 
And he that shall keep this oftenest in his mind, and be 
among the first to prepare for their enjoyment, by adminis- 
tering what helps he can to the encouragement of manly 
exercises among us, will assist in reviving the good old 
epithets of "merry England," and " merry London," in a sense 
they never have had yet. The progress of society has put an 
end to the melancholy absurdity of inquisitions, and star- 
chambers, and civil wars. The ground, therefore, is more 
clear for us to make England merrier in all respects than she 
was before. These things, we are aware, must result from 
other changes ; but the changes themselves are in the reason- 
able and inevitable course of events. 



TREES IN THE CITY. 21 

As a link of a very pleasing description between old times 
and new not unconnected with what we have been speaking 
of, we shall conclude our introduction by observing, that 
there is scarcely a street in the city of London, perhaps not 
one, nor many out of the pale of it, from some part of which 
the passenger may not discern a tree. Most persons to whom 
this has been mentioned have doubted the accuracy of our 
information, nor do we profess hitherto to have ascertained it ; 
though since we heard the assertion, we have made a point of 
endeavouring to do so whenever we could, and have not been 
disappointed. The mention of the circumstance generally 
creates a laughing astonishment, and a cry of " impossible ! " 
Two persons, who successively heard of it the other day, not 
only thought it incredible as a general fact, but doubted 
whether half a dozen streets could be found with a twig in 
them ; and they triumphantly instanced " Cheapside," as a 
place in which it was "out of the question." Yet in Cheap- 
side is an actual, visible, and even ostentatiously visible tree, to 
all who have eyes to look about them. It stands at the corner 
of Wood Street, and occupies the space of a house. There 
was a solitary one the other day in St. Paul's Churchyard, 
which has now got a multitude of young companions. A 
little child was shown us a few years back, who was said 
never to have beheld a tree but that single one in St. Paul's 
Churchyard. Whenever a tree was mentioned, she thought 
it was that and no other. She had no conception even of the 
remote tree in Cheapside ! This appears incredible ; but 
there would seem to be no bounds, either to imagination or to 
the want of it. We were told the other day, on good autho- 
rity, of a man who had resided six-and -thirty years in the 
square of St. Peter's at Rome, and then for the first time went 
inside the Cathedral. 

There is a little garden in Watling Street ! It lies com- 
pletely open to the eye, being divided from the footway by a 
railing only. 

In the body of our work will be found notices of other trees 
and green spots, that surprise the observer in the thick of the 
noise and smoke. Many of them are in churchyards. Others 
have disappeared during the progress of building. Many 
courts and passages are named from trees that once stood in 
them, as Vine and Elm Court, Fig-tree Court, Green-arbour 
Court, &c. It is not surprising that garden-houses, as they 
were called, should have formely aboimded in Holborn, in 



22 CULTIVATION OF FLOWERS. 

Bunhill Row, and other (at that time) suburban places. We 
notice the fact, in order to observe how fond the poets were 
of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to 
have made a point of having one. The only London residence 
of Chapman which is known, was in Old Street Road ; doubt- 
less at that time a rural suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's 
house, on the Surrey side of the Thames (for they lived as 
well as wrote together), most probably had a garden: and 
Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of 
the mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even 
y a flower, put in a window in the streets of a great city (and 
the London citizens, to their credit, are fond of flowers,) 
affects the eye something in the same way as the hand-organs, 
which bring unexpected music to the ear. They refresh the 
common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy 
discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which 
are associated with the remembrance of all that is young and 
innocent. They seem also to present to us a portion of the 
tranquillity we think we are labouring for, and the desire of 
which is felt as an earnest that we shall realise it somewhere, 
either in this world or in the next. Above all, they render 
us more cheerful for the performance of present duties ; and 
the smallest seed of this kind, dropt into the heart of man, is 
worth more, and may terminate in better fruits, than anybody 
but a great poet could tell us. 




23 



CHAPTER I. 
ST. PAUL'S, AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 

The Roman Temple of Diana — The first Christian Church — Old St. 
Paul's — Inigo Jones's Portico — Strange Usages of Former Times — 
Encroachments on the Fabric of the Cathedral — Paul's Walkers — 
Dining with Duke Humphrey — Catholic Customs — The Boy-Bishop 
■ — The Children of the Eevels — Strange Ceremony on the Festivals 
of the Commemoration and Conversion of St. Paul — Ancient Tombs 
in the Cathedral — Scene between John of Gaunt and the Anti- 
Wickliffites — Paul's Cross — The Folkmote — The Sermons — Jane 
Shore — See-saw of Popery and Protestantism — London House — 
The Charnel — The Lollards' Tower — St. Paul's School— Desecration 
of the Cathedral during the Commonwealth — The present Cathedral 
— Sir Christopher Wren — Statue of Queen Anne. 

S St. Paul's Churchyard is probably the 
oldest ground built upon in London, we 
begin our perambulations in that quarter. 
The cross which formerly stood north of 
the cathedral, and of which Stowe could 
not tell the antiquity, is supposed by 
some to have originated in one of those 
sacred stones which the Druids made 
use of in worship ; but at least it is more than probable that 
here was a burial-ground of the ancient Britons; because 
when Sir Christopher Wren dug for a foundation to his 
cathedral, he discovered abundance of ivory and wooden pins, 
apparently of box, which are supposed to have fastened their 
winding sheets. The graves, of the Saxons lay above them, 
lined with chalk-stones, or consisting of stones hollowed out : 
and in the same row with the pins, but deeper, lay Roman 
horns, lamps, lachrymatories, and all the elegancies of classic 
sculpture. Sir Christoper dug till he came to sand, and sea- 
shells, and to the London clay, which has since become 
famous in geology ; so that the single history of St. Paul's 
Churchyard carries us back to the remotest periods of 
tradition ; and we commence our book in the proper style of 
the old Chroniclers, who were not content, unless they began 
with the history of the world. 

The Romans were thought to have built a Temple to Diana 
on the site of the modern cathedral, by reason of a number of 
relics of horned animals reported to have been dug up there. 




24 THE ROMAN TEMPLE OF DIANA. 

Sir Christopher Wren asserts that there was no ground for 
the supposition. There was a similar story of a temple of 
Apollo at Westminster, built on the site cf the present abbey, 
end said to have been destroyed by an earthquake. " Earth- 
quakes," observed Sir Christopher, " break not stones to 
pieces ; nor would the Picts be at that pains ; but I imagine 
that the monks, finding the Londoners pretending to a Temple 
of Diana, where now St. Paul's stands (horns of stags and 
tusks of boars having been dug up in former times, and it is 
said also in later years), would not be behindhand in antiquity ; 
but I must assert, that having changed all the foundations of 
old St. Paul's, and upon that occasion rummaged all the 
ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find some 
footsteps of such a temple, 1 could not discover any, and 
therefore can give no more credit to Diana than to Apollo."* 

Woodward, on the other hand, insisted on the Temple of 
Diana. He asserted, that a variety of the relics alluded to, 
in his own possession, were actually dug up on the spot, 
together with sacrificing vessels sculptured with beasts of 
chase, and with figures of Diana. In digging between the 
Deanery and Blackfriars a small brass figure of the goddess 
had also been found. f 

Woodward was an enthusiast, eager to find what he fancied. 
Wren was willing to find also, but with cooler eyes. It is at 
the same time worth observing, that though Sir Christopher 
appears to have rejected the Pagan story with reason, he 
could not find it in his heart to refuse credit to the gratuitous 
traditions of old writers in favour of a Christian church 
" planted here by the Apostles themselves. "J He calls the 
traditions " authentic testimony." 

It is barely possible that the relics mentioned by Woodward 
might have been all dug up by the time Sir Christopher set 
about his inquiry ; but let them have been what they might, 
they would have proved nothing in favour of a Roman Temple, 
because the Romans never buried under their temples ; neither 
did their legions remain long enough in this country to see the 
character of the place altered. It was sufficiently remarkable, 
that proofs had been discovered even of their burying there at 
all; for, at Rome, none but very extraordinary persons were 
suffered to be buried within the walls ; and the Roman ceme- 

* Parentalia, p. 290, quoted in the work next mentioned, 
f Brayley's Loudon and Middlesex, vol. i. p. 87. 
% Parentalia, p. 27. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 25 

teries in England are proved to have been without them. It 
can only be accounted for on the supposition that, as no great 
men are so great as the great men of colonies, the Prefects and 
their officers at London decreed themselves an honour, which 
was to be attained at Rome by nothing short of the merits of 
a Fabricius or a Publicola. 

The first authentic account of the existence of a Christian 
church on this spot is that of Bede, who attributes the erec- 
tion of it to King Ethelbert, about the year 610, soon after 
his conversion by St. Augustine. The building, which was 
probably of wood, was burned down in 961, but was restored 
the same year — a proof that, notwithstanding the lofty terms 
in which it is spoken of by the old historian, it could not 
have been of any great extent. This second church lasted 
till the time of William the Conqueror, when it, too, was 
destroyed by a conflagration, which burned the greater part 
of the city. Bishop Maurice, who had just been appointed to 
the see, now resolved to rebuild the cathedral on a much 
grander scale than before, at his own expense. To assist him 
in accomplishing this object, the King granted him the stones 
of an old castle, called the Palatine Tower, which stood at the 
mouth of the Fleet River, and which had been reduced to ruins 
in the same conflagration. The Bishop's design was looked 
upon as so vast, that "men at that time," says Stowe, "judged 
it wold never have bin finished ; it was then so wonderfull for 
length and breadth."* This was in the year 1087 ; and the 
people had some reason for their astonishment, for the building 
was not completed till the year 1240, in the reign of Henry 
the Third. Some even extend the date to 1315, which is two 
hundred and twenty-eight years after its foundation; but this 
was owing rather to repairs and additions than to anj'thing 
wanting in the original edifice. The cathedral thus patched, 
altered, and added to, over and over again, with different 
orders and no orders of architecture, and partially burned, 
oftener than once, remained till the Great Fire of London, 
when it was luckily rendered incapable of further deformity, 
and gave way to the present. 

It was, indeed, a singular structure, and used for singular 
purposes. 

'* The exterior of the building," says an intelligent writer, himself 
an architect, " presented a curious medley of the architectural style of 

* Survey of London, p. 262. First edition. 



26 



OLD ST. PAUL S. 



different ages. At the western front Inigo Jones had erected a portico 
of the Corinthian order ; thus diplaying a singular example of that 
bigotry of taste, which, only admitting one mode of beauty, is insensible 
to the superior claims of congruity. This portico, however, singly 
considered, was a grand and beautiful composition, and not inferior to 
any thing of the kind which modern times have produced : fourteen 
columns, each rising to the lofty height of forty-six feet, were so dis- 
posed, that eight, with two pilasters placed in front, and three on each 
flank, formed a square (oblong) peristyle, and supported an entabla- 
ture and balustrade, which was crowned with statues of kings, prede- 
cessors of Charles the First, who claimed the honour of this fabric. 
Had the whole front been accommodated to Eoman architecture, it 
might h?*ve deserved praise as a detached composition ; but though 
cased with rustic work, and decorated with regular cornices, the 
pediment retained the original Gothic character in its equilateral pro- 
portions, and it was flanked by barbarous obelisks and ill-designed 
turrets. 




" The whole of the exterior body of the church had been cased and 
reformed in a similar manner, through which every detail of antiquity 
was obliterated, and the general forms and proportions only left. The 
buttresses were converted into regular piers, and a complete cornice 
crowned the whole : of the windows, some were barely ornamented 
apertures, whilst others were decorated in a heavy Italian manner, 
with architrave dressings, brackets, and cherubic heads. The tran* 



VERSES ON ITS RENOVATION. 27 

septs presented fronts of the same incongruous style as the western 
elevation, and without any of its beauties." * 

In its original state, however, old St. Paul's must have been 
an imposing building. Its extent at least was very great. 
The entire mass measured 690 feet in length, by 130 in 
breadth, and it was surmounted by a spire 520 feet high. The 
spire was of timber. It bore upon its summit not only a ball 
and cross, but a large gilded eagle, which served as a weather- 
cock. But the church having been nearly burned to the 
ground in June, 1561, owing to the carelessness of a plumber 
who left a pan of coals burning near some wood-work while 
he went to dinner, it was hastily restored without the lofty 
spire ; so that in Hollar's engraving, given by Dugdale, of the 
building as it appeared in 1656, it stands curtailed of this 
ornament. Only the square tower, from which the spire sprang 
up, remains. " The old cathedral," says Mr. Malcolm, on the 
authority of a note with which he was furnished by the Eev. 
Mr. Watts, of Sion College, " did not stand in the same direc- 
tion with the new, the latter inclining rather to the south- 
west and north-east ; and the west front of the Old Church 
came much farther towards Ludgate than the present."")* 

It is of the Cathedral, as thus renovated, that Sir John 
Denham speaks in the following passage of his Cooper's Hill : — 
" That sacred pile, so vast, so high, 
That whether it 's a part of earth or sky, 
Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud 
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud ; 
Paul's, the late name of such a muse whose flight 
Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height ; 
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire, 
Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire, 
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings, 
Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.'* 

" The best of poets " is his brother courtier "Waller, who 
had some time before written his verses " Upon his Majesty's 
repairing of St. Paul's," in which he compares King Charles, 
for his regeneration of the Cathedral, to Amphion and other 
" antique minstrels," who were said to have achieved archi- 
tectural feats by the power of music, and who, he says, 
" Sure were Charles-like kings, 
Cities their lutes, and subjects' hearts their strings ; 
On which with so divine a hand they strook, 
Consent of motion from their breath they took." 

* Fine Arts of the English School, quoted in Brayley, vol. ii. p. 217, 
f Londinium Redivivum, iii., p. 134, 



28 STRANGE USAGE 

Jones's first labour, the removal of the various foreign 
encumbrances that had so long oppressed and deformed the 
venerable edifice, Waller commemorates by a pair of references 
to St. Paul's history, not unhappily applied : he says the whole 
nation had combined with his Majesty 

" to grace 
The Gentiles' great Apostle, and deface 
Those state-obscuring sheds, that like a chain 
Seem'd to confine and fetter him again ; 
"Which the glad Saint shakes off at his command, 
As once the viper from his sacred hand." 

Denham's prediction did no credit to the prophetic reputa- 
tion of poetry. Of the fabric which was to be unassailable 
by zeal or fire the poet himself lived to see the ruin, begun 
by the one and completed by the other ; and he himself, 
curiously enough, a short time before his death, was engaged 
as the King's surveyor-general in (nominally at least) pre- 
siding over the erection of the new Cathedral — the successor 
of the " sacred pile," of which he had thus sung the immor- 
tality. 

When Jones began the repairs and additions of which his 
portico formed a part, in 1633, the rubbish that was removed 
was carried, Mr. Malcolm informs us, to Clerkenwell fields, 
where, he suggests, " some curious fragments of antiquity may 
still remain."* The very beauty of this portico, surmounted 
with its strange pediment and figures, and dragging at its back 
that heap of deformity, completed the monstrous look of the 
whole building, like a human countenance backed by some 
horned lump. But this was nothing to the moral deformities 
of the interior. Old St. Paul's, throughout almost the whole 
period of its existence, at least from the reign of Henry the 
Third, was a thoroughfare, and a " den of thieves." The 
thoroughfare was occasioned probably by the great circuit 
which people had been compelled to make by the extent of 
the wall of the old churchyard — a circumference a great deal 
larger than it is at present. There is a principle of familiarity 
in the Catholic worship which, while it excites the devotional 
tenderness of more refined believers, is apt to produce the 
consequence, though not the feelings, of contempt among the 
vulgar. Fear hinders contempt ; but when license is mixed 
with it, and the fear is not in action, the liberties taken are 
apt to be in proportion. We have seen, in a Catholic chapel 
* Londinium Bedivivum. iii., p. 81, 



OF FORMER TIMES. 29 

in London, a milk-maid come into the passage, dash down her 
pails, and having crossed herself, and applied the holy water 
with reverence, depart with the same air with which she came 
in. The next thing to setting down the pails, under the cir- 
cumstances above mentioned, would have been to creep with 
them through the church. Porters and loiterers would follow; 
and by degrees the place of worship would become a place of 
lounging and marketing, and intrigue, and all sorts of dis- 
order. In the reign of Edward the Third, the King complains 
to the Bishop that the " eating-room of the canons " had 
" become the office and work-place of artisans, and the resort 
of shameless women." The complaint turned out to be of no 
avail ; nor had the mandate of the Bishop a better result in the 
time of Eichard the Third, though it was accompanied with 
the penalty of excommunication. An Act was passed to as 
little purpose in the reign of Philip and Mary ; and in the 
time of Elizabeth the new opinions in religion seem to have 
left the place fairly in possession of its chaos, as if in derision 
of the old. The toleration of the abuse thus became a matter 
of habit and indifference; and a young theologian, afterwards 
one of the witty prelates of Charles the Second (Bishop Earle), 
did not scruple to make it the subject of what we should now 
call a "pleasant article." 

" It must appear strange," says a note in Brayley's London and 
Middlesex (vol. ii. p. 219), "to those who are acquainted with the 
decent order and propriety of regulation now observed in our cathe- 
dral churches, and other places of divine worship, that ever such an 
extended catalogue of improper customs and disgusting usages as 
are noticed in various works, should have been formerly admitted to 
be practised in St. Paul's church, and more especially that they should 
have been so long habitually exercised as to be defended on the plea 
of prescription. 

" These nuisances had become so great, that in the time of Philip 
and Mary the Common Council found it necessary to pass an act, 
subjecting all future offenders to pains and penalties. From that act, 
the church seems to have been not only made a common passage-way 
for all — beer, bread, fish, flesh, fardels of stuffs, &c, but also for 
mules, horses, and other beasts. This statute, however, must have 
proved only a temporary restraint (excepting, probably, as to the 
leading of animals through the church); for in the reign of Elizabeth, 
we learn from Londinium Redivivum (vol. hi. p. 71), that idlers and 
drunkards were indulged in lying and sleeping on the benches at the 
choir door ; and that other usages, too nauseous for description, were 
also frequent." 

Among the curious notices relating to the irreverent prac- 
tices pursued in this church in the time of Elizabeth, collected 



SO ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CATHEDRAL. 

by Mr. Malcolm from the manuscript presentments on visita- 
tions preserved at St. Paul's, are the following : — 

"In the upper quier wher the comon [communion] table dothe 
stande, there is much unreverente people, walking with their hatts on 
their heddes, comonly all the service tyme, no man reproving them 
for yt." 

" Yt is a greate disorder in the churche, that porters, butchers, and 
water-bearers, and who not, be suffered (in special tyme of service) 
to carrye and recarrye whatsoever, no man withstandinge them, or 
gainsaying them," &c. 

" The notices of encroachments on St. Paul's, in the same reign, are 
equally curious. The chantry and other chapels were completely 
diverted from their ancient purposes ; some were used as receptacles 
for stores and lumber ; another was a school, another a glazier's shop ; 
and the windows of all were, in general, broken. Part of the vaults 
beneath the church was occupied by a carpenter, the remainder was 
held by the bishop, the dean and chapter, and the minor canons. 
One vault, thought to have been used for a burial-place, was con- 
verted into a wine-cellar, and a way had been cut into it through the 
wall of the building itself. (This practice of converting church 
vaults into wine-cellars, it may be remarked, is not yet worn out. 
Some of the vaults of Winchester Cathedral are now, or were lately, 
used for that purpose.) The shrowds and cloisters under the convo- 
cation house, ' where not long since the sermons in foul weather were 
wont to be preached,' were made ' a common lay-stall for boardes, 
trunks, and chests, being lett oute unto trunk-makers, where, by 
meanes of their daily knocking and noyse, the church is greatly dis- 
turbed.' More than twenty houses also had been built against the 
outer walls of the cathedral ; and part of the very foundations was 
cut away to make offices. One of those houses had literally a closet 
dug in the wall ; from another was a way through a window into a 
wareroom in the steeple ; a third, partly formed by St. Paul's, was 
lately used as a play-house ; and the owner of the fourth baked his 
bread and pies in an oven excavated within a buttress."* 

The middle of St. Paul's was also the Bond Street of that 
period, and remained so till the time of the Commonwealth. 
The loungers were called Paul's Walkers. 

" The young gallants from the inns of court, the western and the 
northern parts of the metropolis, and those that had spirit enough," 
says our author, " to detach themselves from the counting-houses in 
the east, used to meet at the central point, St. Paul's ; and from this 
circumstance obtained the appellations of Paul's Walkers, as we now 
aay, Bond-street Loungers. However strange it may seem, tradition 
says that the great Lord Bacon used in his youth to cry, Eastward ho I 
and was literally a Paul's Walker." f 

Lord Bacon had a taste for display, which was afterwards 
exhibited in a magnificent manner, worthy of the grandeur 
of his philosophy ; but this, when he was young, might 

* Londinium Redivivum. vol. iii., pp. 71, 73. 
f Moser, in the European Magazine, July, 1807. 



DIKING WITH DUKE HUMPHREY. 3t 

probably enough have been vented in the shape of an exube- 
rance, which did not yet know what to do with itself. Who 
would think that the late Mr. Fox ever wore red-heeled shoes, 
and was a " buck about town ?" 

But to conclude with these curious passages : — 
" The Walkers in Paul's," continues our author, " during this and 
the following reigns, were composed of a motley assemblage of the 
gay, the vain, the dissolute, the idle, the knavish, and the lewd ; and 
various notices of this fashionable resort may be found in the old plays 
and other writings of the time. Ben Jonson, in his Every man out of 
his Humour, has given a series of scenes in the interior of St. Paul's, 
and an assemblage of a great variety of characters ; in the course of 
which the curious piece of information occurs, that it was common to 
affix bills, in the form of advertisements, upon the columns in the 
aisles of the church, in a similar manner to what is now done in the 
Koyal Exchange : those bills he ridicules in two affected specimens, 
the satire of which is admirable. Shakspeare also makes Falstaff say, 
in speaking of Bardolph, 'I bought him in Paul's, and he'll buy me a 
horse in Smithfield : if I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were 
mann'd, hors'd, and wiv'd.' " 

To complete these urbanities, the church was the resort of 
pickpockets. Bishop Corbet, a poetical wit of the time of 
Charles the First, sums up its character, as the " walke 
" Where all our Brittaine sinners sweare and talk." * 

Only one reformation had taken place in it since the com- 
plaint made by Edward the Third : no woman, at the time of 
Earle's writing, was to be found there ; at least not in the 
crowd. " The visitants," he says, " are all men without 
exception." | A commonwealth writer insinuates otherwise ; 
but the visitation was not public. The practice of " walking 
and talking" in St. Paul's appears to have revived under 
James the Second, probably in connection with Catholic 
wishes ; for therewas an Act of William and Mary, by which 
transgressors forfeited twenty pounds for every offence; and, 
what is remarkable, the Bishop threatened to enforce this Act 
so late as the year 1725 ; " the custom," says Mr. Malcolm, 
" had become so very prevalent." J 

A proverb of " dining with Duke Humphrey," has sur- 
vived to the present day, owing to a supposed tomb of 
Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester, which was popular 
with the poorer frequenters of the place. They had a custom 
of strewing herbs before it, and sprinkling it with water. 

* Poems. Gilchrist's edition, 1807, p. 5. 
•f Microcosmographie, quoted in Pennant. 

% Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London during the 
Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 281. 



32 CATHOLIC CUSTOMS. 

The tomb, according to Stow, was not Humphrey's, but that 
of Sir John Beauchamp, one of the house of Warwick. Men 
who strolled about for want of a dinner, were familiar enough 
with this tomb ; and were therefore said to dine with Duke 
Humphrey. 

While some of the extraordinary operations above-men- 
tioned were going on (the intriguing, picking of pockets, &c), 
the sermon was very likely proceeding. It is but fair, how- 
ever, to conclude, that in the Catholic times, during the 
elevation of the host, there was a show of respect. We have 
heard a gentleman say, who visited Spain in his childhood, 
that he remembered being at the theatre during a fandango, 
when a loud voice cried out " Dios" (God); and all the 
people in the house, including the dancers, fell on their knees. 
A profound silence ensued. After a pause of a few seconds, 
the people rose, and the fandango went on as before. The 
little boy could not think what had happened, but was told 
that the host had gone by. The Deity (for so it was thought) 
had been sent for to trie house of a sick man; and it was to 
honour him in passing, that the theatre had gone down on 
their knees. Catholics reform as well as other people, with 
the growth of knowledge, especially when restrictions no 
longer make their prejudices appear a matter of duty. We 
know not how it is in Spain at this moment, with regard to 
the devout interval of the fandango ; but we know what 
would be thought of it by thousands of the offspring of those 
who witnessed it on this occasion ; and certainly in no 
Catholic church now-a-days can be seen the abominations of 
old St. Paul's. 

The passenger who now goes by the cathedral, and asso- 
ciates the idea of the inside with that of respectful silence 
and the simplicity of Protestant worship, little thinks what a 
noise has been in that spot, and what gorgeous processions 
have issued out of it. 

Old St. Paul's was famous for the splendour of its shrine, 
and for its priestly wealth. The list of its copes, vestments, 
jewels, gold and silver cups, candlesticks, &c, occupies 
thirteen folio pages of the Monasticon. The side aisles were 
filled with chapels to different saints and the Virgin ; that is 
to say, with nooks partitioned off one from another, and 
enriched with separate altars ; and it is calculated, that, 
taking the whole establishment, there could hardly be fewer 
than two hundred priests. On certain holidays, this sacred 



the BOY-Bisnor. 33 

multitude, in their richest copes, together with the lord mayor, 
aldermen, and city companies, and all the other parish priests 
of London, who carried a rich silver cross for every church, 
issued forth from the cathedral door in procession, singing a 
hymn, and so went through Cheapside and Cornhill to Leaden - 
hall, and back again. The last of these spectacles was for 
the peace of Guisnes, in 1546 ; shortly after which Henry the 
Eighth swept into his treasury the whole glories of Catholic 
worship — copes, crosses, jewels, church-plate, &c. — himself 
being the most bloated enormity that had ever misused them. 

Among other retainers to the establishment, Henry sup- 
pressed a singular little personage, entitled the Boy-Bishop. 
The Boy-Bishop (JEpiscopus Puerorum) was a chorister annu- 
ally -elected by his fellows to imitate the state and attire of a 
bishop, which he assumed on St. Nicholas's clay, the sixth of 
December, and retained till that of the Innocents, December 
the twenty-eighth. 

" This was done," says Brayley, " in commemoration of St. Nicholas, 
who, according to the Romish Church, was so piously fashioned, that 
even when a babe in his cradle he would fast both on Wednesdays and 
Fridays, and at those times was ' well pleased' to suck but once a-day. 
However ridiculous it may now seem, the Boy-Bishop is stated to have 
possessed episcopal authority during the above term ; and the other 
children were his prebendaries. He was not permitted to celebrate 
mass, but he had full liberty to preach ; and however puerile his dis- 
course; might have been, we find they were regarded with so much 
attention, that the learned Dean Colet, in his statutes for St. Paul's 
school, expressly ordained that the scholars shall, on ' every Childermas 
daye, come to Paule's Churche, and hear the Chylde Bishop's sermon, 
and after be at the hygh masse, and each of them offer a penny to the 
Chylde Bishop ; and with them the maisters and surveyors of the 
scole.' Probably," continues Mr. Brayley, " these orations, though 
affectedly childish, were composed by the more aged members of the 
church. If the Boy-Bishop died within the time of his prelacy, he was 
interred in pontificalibus, with the same ceremonies as the real 
diocesan ; and the tomb of a child-bishop in Salisbury Cathedral may 
be referred to as an instance of such interment." * 

" From a printed church-book," says Mr. Hone, " containing the 
service of the boy-bishops set to music, we learn that, on the eve of 
Innocents'-day, the Boy-Bishop, and his youthful clergy, in their 
copes, and with burning tapers in their hands, went in solemn pro- 
cession, chanting and singing versicles, as they walked into the 
choir by the west door, in such order that the dean and canons went 
foremost, the chaplains next, and the Boy-Bishop with his priests in 
the last and highest place. He then took his seat, and the rest of the 
children disposed themselves on each side of the choir, upon the upper- 
most ascent, the canons resident bearing the incense and the book, 

* London and Middlesex, vol. ii., p. 229. 



S4 

and the petit-canons the tapers, according to the ruhrick. Afterwards 
he proceeded to the altars of the Holy Trinity and All Saints, which 
he first censed, and next the image of the Holy Trinity, his priests 
all the while singing. Then they all chanted a service with prayers 
and responses, and, in the like manner taking his seat, the Boy-Bishop 
repeated salutations, prayers, and yersicles ; and in conclusion gave 
his henediction to the people, the chorus answering Deo Gratias." * 

The origin of customs is often as obscure as that of 
words, and may be traced with probability to many sources. 
Perhaps the boy-bishop had a reference, not only to St. 
Nicholas, but to Christ preaching when a boy among the 
doctors, and to the divine wisdom of his recommendations of 
a childlike simplicity. The school afterwards founded by 
Dean Colet was in honour of " the child Jesus." There was 
a school attached to the cathedral, of which Colet's was, 
perhaps, a revival, as far as scholarship was concerned. The 
boys in the older school were not only taught singing but 
acting, and for a long period were the most popular per- 
formers of stage-plays. In the time of Eichard the Second, 
these Boy-Actors petitioned the King to prohibit certain 
ignorant and "inexpert people from presenting the History 
of the Old Testament." They began with sacred plays, but 
afterwards acted profane ; so that St. Paul's singing-school 
was numbered among the play-houses. This custom, as well 
as that of the boy-bishop, appears to have been common 
wherever there were choir-boys ; and it doubtless originated, 
partly in the theatrical nature of the catholic ceremonies at 
which they assisted, and partly in the delight which the more 
scholarly of their masters took in teaching the plays of 
Terence and Seneca. The annual performance of a play of 
Terence, still kept up at Westminster school, is supposed by 
Warton to be a remnant of it. The choristers of Westminster 
Abbey, and of the chapel of Queen Elizabeth, (who took 
great pleasure in their performances), were celebrated as 
actors, though not so much so at those of St. Paul's. A set 
of them were incorporated under the title of Children of the 
Ivevels, among whom are to be found names that have since 
become celebrated as the fellow-actors of Shakspeare — Field, 
Underwood, and others. It was the same with Hart, Mohun, 
and others, who were players in the time of Cibber. It 
appears that children with good voices were sometimes kid- 
napped for a supply. | Tusser, who wrote the Five Hundred 

* Ancient Mysteries described, &c, 1823, p. 195. 
f Purveyed is the word of Mr. Chalmers; who says, however, that he 
icnows not on what principle the right of " purveying such children * 



THE CHILDREN OF THE REVELS. 35 

Points of Good Husbandry, is thought to have been thus 
pressed into the service ; and a relic of the custom is supposed 
to have existed in that of pressing drummers for the army, 
which survived so late as the accession of Charles the First. 
The exercise of the right of might over children, and by 
people who wanted singers — an effeminate press-gang — would 
seem an intolerable nuisance ; but the children were probably 
glad enough to be complimented by the violence, and to go to 
sing and play before a court. 

Ben Jonson has some pretty verses on one of these juvenile 
actors : 

Weep with me, all you that read 

This little story; 
And know, for whom a tear you shed, 
Death's self is sorry. 

'Twas a child that so did thrive 

In grace and feature, 
As heaven and nature seemed to strive 

Which owned the creature. 

Years he numbered, scarce thirteen, 

When fates turned cruel; 
Yet three filled zodiacs had he been 

The stage's jewel; 

And did act (what now we moan) 

Old men so duly, 
As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one, 

He played so truly. 

Till, by error of his fate, 

They all consented; 
But viewing him since (alas! too late) 

They have repented ; 

And have sought (to give new birth) 

In baths to steep him! 
But being so much too good for earth, 

Heaven vows to keep him. 

This child, we see, was celebrated for acting old men. It 
is well known that, up to the Restoration, and sometimes 
afterwards, boys performed the parts of women. Kynaston, 
when a boy, used to be taken out by the ladies an airing, in 
his female dress after the play. This custom of males 
appearing as females gave rise, in Shakspeare's time, to the 
frequent introduction of female characters disguised; thus 

was justified, " except by the maxim that the king had a right to the 
services of all his subjects." See Johnson and Steeven's Shakspeare, 
Prolegomena, vol. ii., p. 516. 

D 2 



66 FESTIVALS OF THE COMMEMORATION, &C. 

presenting a singular anomaly, and a specimen of the 
gratuitous imaginations of the spectators in those days ; who, 
besides being contented with taking the bare stage for a 
wood, a rock, or a garden, as it happened, were to suppose a 
boy on the stage to pretend to be himself. 

One of the strangest of the old ceremonies, in which the 
clergy of the cathedral used to figure, was that which was 
performed twice a year, namely, on the day of the Com* 
memoration and on that of the Conversion of St. Paul. On 
the former of these festivals, a fat doe, and on the latter, a fat 
buck, was presented to the Church by the family of Baud, in 
consideration of some land which they held of the Dean and 
Chapter at West Lee in Essex. The original agreement 
made with Sir William Le Baud, in 1274, was, that he 
himself should attend in person with the animals ; but some 
years afterwards it was arranged that the presentation should 
be made by a servant, accompanied by a deputation of part 
of the family. The priests, however, continued to perform 
their part in the show. When the deer was brought to the 
foot of the steps leading to the choir, the reverend brethren 
appeared in a body to receive it, dressed in their full 
pontifical robes, and having their heads decorated with 
garlands of flowers. From thence they accompanied it as 
the servant led it forward to the high altar, where having 
been solemnly offered and slain, it was divided among the 
residentiaries. The horns were then fastened to the top of a 
spear, and carried in procession by the whole company 
around the inside of the church, a noisy concert of horns 
regulating their march. This ridiculous exhibition, which 
looks like a parody on the pagan ceremonies of their pre- 
decessors the priests of Diana, was continued by the cathedral 
clergy down to the time of Elizabeth. 

The modern passenger through St. Paul's Churchyard has 
not only the last home of Nelson and others to venerate, as 
he goes by. In the ground of the old church were buried, 
and here, therefore, remains whatever dust may survive them, 
the gallant Sir Philip Sydney (the beau ideal of the age of 
Elizabeth), and Vandyke, who immortalised the youth and 
beauty of the court of Charles the First. One of Elizabeth's 
great statesmen also lay there — Walsingham — who died so 
poor, that he was buried by stealth, to prevent his body from 
being arrested. Another, Sir Christopher Hatton, who is 
supposed to have danced himself into the office of her 



SIR CHKISTOPHER HATTON'S EPITAPH. 37 

Majesty's Chancellor,* had a tomb which his contemporaries 
thought too magnificent, and which was accused of " shoulder- 
ing" the altar. There was an absurd epitaph upon it, by 
which he would seem to have been a dandy to the last. 

Stay and behold the mirror of a dead man's house, 

Whose lively person would have made thee stay and wonder. 

* # # # 

When Nature moulded him, her thoughts were most on Mars ; 
-And all the heavens to make him goodly were agreeing; 
Thence he was valiant, active, strong, and passing comely; 
And God did grace his mind and spirit with gifts excelling. 
Nature commends her workmanship to Fortune's charge, 
Fortune presents him to the court and queen, 
Queen Eliz. (0 God's dear handmayd) his most miracle. 
Now hearken, reader, raritie not heard or seen ; 
This blessed Queen, mirror of all that Albion rul'd, 
Gave favour to his faith, and precepts to his hopeful time; 
First trained him in the stately band of pensioners ; 

* * * * 

And for her safety made him Captain of the Guard. 
Now doth she prune this vine, and from her sacred breast 
Lessons his life, makes wise his heart for her great councells, 
And so, Vice- Chamberlain, where foreign princes eyes 
Might well admire her choyce, wherein she most excels. 
He then aspires, says the writer, to " the highest subject's 
seat," and becomes 

Lord Chancelour (measure and conscience of a holy king:) 
Robe, Collar, Garter, dead figures of great honour, 
Alms-deeds with faith, honest in word, frank in dispence, 
The poor's friend, not popular, the church's pillar. 
This tombe sheweth one, the heaven's shrine the other, f 
The first line in italics, and the poetry throughout, are 
only to be equalled by a passage in an epitaph we have met 
with on a Lady of the name of Greenwood, of whom her 
husband says: — 

" Her graces and her qualities were such 
That she might have married a bishop or a judge; 
But so extreme was her condescension and humility, 
That she married me, a poor doctor of divinity; 
By which heroic deed, she stands confest, 
Of all other women, the phoenix of her sex." 
Sir Christopher is said to have died of a broken heart, 
because his once loving mistress exacted a debt of him which 
he found it difficult to pay. It was common to talk of 

* " His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green, 
His high-crown'd hat, and satin doublet, 
Mov'd the stout heart of England's queen, 
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it." — Ghat. 

f Maitland's History of London, vol. ii., p. 1170, 



38 FLETCHER, BISHOP OF LONDON. 

courtiers dying of broken hearts at that time ; which gives 
one an equal notion of the Queen's power, and the servility of 
those gentlemen. Fletcher, Bishop of London, father of the 
great poet, was another who had a tomb in the old church, 
and is said to have undergone the same fate. It was he that 
did a thing very unlike a poet's father. He attended the 
execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and said aloud, when her 
head was held up by the executioner, " So perish all Queen 
Elizabeth's enemies ! " He was then Dean of Peterborough. 
The Queen made him a bishop, but suspended him for marry- 
ing a second wife, which so preyed upon his feelings, that it 
is thought, by the help of an immoderate love of smoking, to 
have hastened his end — a catastrophe worthy of a mean 
courtier. He was well, sick, and dead, says Fuller, in a 
quarter of an hour. Most probably he died of apoplexy, the 
tobacco giving him the coup de grace.* 

Dr. Donne, the head of the metaphysical poets, so well 
criticised by Johnson, was Dean of St. Paul's, and had. a 
grave here, of which he has left an extraordinary memorial. 
It is a wooden image of himself, made to his order, and repre- 
senting him as he was to appear in his shroud. This, for 
some time before he died, he kept by his bed-side in an open 
coffin, thus endeavouring to reconcile an uneasy imagination 
to the fate he could not avoid. It is still preserved in the 
vaults under the church, and is to be seen with the other 
curiosities of the cathedral. We will not do a great man such 
a disservice as to dig him up for a spectacle. A man should 
be judged of at the time when he is most himself, and not when 
he is about to consign his weak body to its elements. 

Of the events that have taken place connected with St. 
Paul's, one of the most curious was a scene that passed in the 
old cathedral between John of Gaunt and the Anti-Wick- 
liffites. It made him very unpopular at the time. Probably, 
if he had died just after.it, his coffin would have been torn to 
pieces ; but subsequently he had a magnificent tomb in the 
church, on which hung his crest and cap of state, together 
with his lance and target. Perhaps the merits of the friend 
of Wickliff and Chaucer are now as much overvalued. The 
scene is taken as follows, by Mr. Brayley, out of Fox's Acts 
and Monuments. 

* The Bishop's second wife was a Lady Baker, who is said, by 
Mr. Brayley, to have been young as well as beautiful, and probably dicl 
not add to the prelate's repose, 



STRANGE SCENE IN ST. PAULS. 6\) 

u One of the most remarkable occurrences that ever took place 
within the old cathedral was the attempt made, in 1376, by the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, under the command 
of Pope Gregory the Eleventh, to compel Wickliff, the father of the 
English Reformation, to subscribe to the condemnation of some of his 
own tenets, which had been recently promulgated in the eight articles 
that have been termed the Lollards' Creed. The Pope had ordered 
the above prelates to apprehend and examine Wickliff; but they 
thought it most expedient to summon him to St. Paul's, as he was 
openly protected by the famous John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; 
and that nobleman accompanied him to the examination, together 
with the Lord Percy, Marshall of England. The proceedings were 
soon interrupted by a dispute as to whether Wickliff should sit or 
stand ; and the following curious dialogue arose on the Lord Percy 
desiring him to be seated : — 

" Bishop of London. — ' If I could have guessed, Lord Percy, that 
you would have played the master here, I would have prevented your 
coming.' 

" Duke of Lancaster. — ' Yes, he shall play the master here for all 
you.' 

" Lord Percy. — ' Wickliff, sit down! You have need of a seat, for 
you have many things to say.' 

" Bishop of London. — f It is unreasonable that a clergyman, cited 
before his ordinary, should sit during his answer. He shall stand!' 

" Duke of Lancaster. — ' My Lord Percy, you are in the right! And 
for you, my Lord Bishop, you are grown so proud and arrogant, I will 
take care to humble your pride ; and not only yours, my lord, but 
that of all the prelates in England. Thou dependest upon the credit 
of thy relations; but so far from being able to help thee, they shall 
have enough to do to support themselves.' 

" Bishop of London. — ' I place no confidence in my relations, but in 
God alone, who will give me the boldness to speak the truth.' 

" Duke of Lancaster {speaking softly to L\ord Percy). — ' Rather than 
take this at the Bishop's hands, I will drag him by the hair of the 
head out of the court ! '"* 

Old St. Paul's was much larger than now, and the church- 
yard was of proportionate dimensions. The wall by which it 
was bounded ran along by the present streets of Ave Maria 
Lane, Paternoster Row, Old Change, Carter Lane, and Creed 
Lane ; and therefore included a large space and many buildings 
which are not now considered to be within the precincts of the 
cathedral. This spacious area had grass inside, and contained 
a variety of appendages to the establishment. One of these 
was the cross which we have alluded to at the beginning of 
this chapter, and of which Stow did not know the antiquity. 
It was called Paul's Cross, and stood on the north side of the 
church, a little to the east of the entrance of Cannon Alley. 
It was around Paul's Cross, or rather in the space to the east 

* London and Middlesex, vol, ii., p. 231. 



40 THE FOLKMOTE. 

of it that the citizens were wont anciently to assemble in 
Folkmote, or general convention — not only to elect their 
magistrates and to deliberate on public affairs, but also, as it 
would appear, to try offenders and award punishments. We 
read of meetings of the Folkmote in the thirteenth century ; 
but the custom was discontinued, as the increasing number 
of the inhabitants, and the mixture of strangers, were found 
to lead to confusion and tumult. In after times the cross 
appears to have been used chiefly for proclamations, and other 
public proceedings, civil as well as ecclesiastical; such as the 
swearing of the citizens to allegiance, the emission of papal 
bulls, the exposing of penitents, &c, " and for the defaming 
of those," says Pennant, " who had incurred the displeasure of 
crowned heads." A pulpit was attached to it, it was not 
known when, in which sermons were preached, called Paul's 
Cross Sermons, a name by which they continued to be known 
when they ceased in the open air. Many benefactors con- 
tributed to support these sermons. In Stow's time the pulpit 
was an hexagonal piece of wood, " covered with lead, elevated 
upon a flight of stone steps, and surmounted by a large cross." 
During rainy weather the poorer part of the audience retreated 
to a covered place, called the shrowds, which are supposed to 
have abutted on the church wall. The rest, including the 
lord mayor and aldermen, most probably had shelter at all 
times ; and the King and his train (for they attended also) had 
covered galleries.* Popular preachers were invited to hold 
forth in this pulpit, but the Bishop was the inviter. In the 

* The active habits of our ancestors enabled them to bear these out- 
of-door sermons better than their posterity could ; yet, as times grew 
less hardy, they began to have consequences which Bishop Latimer 
attributed to another cause. " The citizens of Raim," said he, in a 
sermon preached in Lincolnshire, in the year 1552, "had their burying- 
place without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do 
marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place 
without, for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the 
city, especially at such a time when there be great sickness, and many 
die together. I think, verily, that many a man taketh his death in 
Paul's Churchyard, and this 1 speak of experience; for I myself, when 
I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt 
such an ill savoured unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it 
a great while after; and I think no less, but it is the occasion of great 
sickness and disease." — Brayley, vol. ii., p. 315. After all, the Bishop 
may have been right in attributing the sickness to the cemetery. We 
have seen frightful probabilities of the same kind in our own time j 
and nothing can be more sensible than what he says of burial-grounds 
in cities. 



THE SERMONS. 41 

reign of James the First, the lord mayor and aldermen ordered, 
that every one who should preach there, " considering the 
journies some of them might take from the universities, or else- 
where, should at his pleasure be freely entertained for five days' 
space, with sweet and convenient lodging, fire, candle, and all 
other necessaries, viz., from Thursday before their day of 
preaching, to Thursday morning following." * " This good 
custom," says Maitland, " continued for some time. And the 
Bishop of London, or his chaplain, when he sent to any one 
to preach, did actually signify the place where he might 
repair at his coming up, and be entertained freely." In earlier 
times a kind of inn seems to have been kept for the entertain- 
ment of the preachers at Paul's Cross, which went by the 
name of the Shunamites 1 House. 

" Before the cross," says Pennant, " was brought, divested of all 
splendour, Jane Shore, the charitable, the merry concubine of Edward 
the Fourth, and, after his death, of his favourite, the unfortunate Lord 
Hastings. After the loss of her protectors, she fell a victim to the 
malice of crooked-backed Richard. He was disappointed (by her 
excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating 
with her lover to destroy him. He then attacked her on the weak 
side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the 
severity of the church: she was carried to the Bishop's palace, clothed 
in a white sheet, with a taper in her hand, and from thence conducted 
to the cathedral and the cross, before which she made a confession of 
her only fault. Every other virtue bloomed in this ill-fated fair with 
the fullest vigour. She could not resist the solicitations of a youthful 
monarch, the handsomest man of his time. On his death she was 
reduced to necessity, scorned by the world, and cast off by her hus- 
band, with whom she was paired in her childish years, and forced to 
fling herself into the arms of Hastings." 

"In her penance she went," says Holinshed, " in countenance and 
pace demure, so womanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie, save 
her kertle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the 
wondering of the people cast a comlie rud in her cheeks (of which she 
before had most misse), that hir great shame wan hir much praise 
among those that were more amorous of hir bodie, than curious of hir 
soule. And manie good folks that hated her living (and glad were to 
see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir penance, than rejoiced 
therein, when they considered that the Protector procured it more of 
a corrupt intent than any virtuous affection." 

"Rowe," continues Pennant, " has flung this part of her sad story 
into the following poetical dress ; but it is far from possessing the 
moving simplicity of the old historian."! 

* Maitland, vol. ii, p. 949. 

f The reader, perhaps, will agree with us in thinking, that the last 
three lines of this poetry are unworthy of the rest, and put Jane io a 
theatrical attitude which she would pot have effected, 



42 JANE SHOKE. 

Submissive, sad, and lonely was her look; 
A burning taper in her hand she bore; 
And on her shoulders, carelessly confused, 
With loose neglect her lovely tresses hung; 
Upon her cheek a faintish flush was spread; 
Feeble she seemed, and sorely smit with pain ; 
While, barefoot as she trod the flinty pavement, 
Her footsteps all along were marked with blood. 
Yet silent still she passed, and unrepining; 
Her streaming eyes bent ever on the earth, 
Except when, in some bitter pang of sorrow, 
To heaven she seemed, in fervent zeal, to raise, 
And beg that mercy man denied her here. 
u , The poet has adopted the fable of her being denied all sustenance, 
and of her perishing with hunger, but that was not a fact. She lived 
to a great age, but in great distress and miserable poverty ; deserted 
even by those to whom she had, during prosperity, done the most 
essential services. She dragged a wretched life even to the time of 
Sir Thomas More, who introduces her story in his Life of Richard the 
Third. The beauty of her person is spoken of in high terms; 'Proper 
she was, and faire; nothing in her body that you would have changed, 
but if you would have wished her somewhat higher. Thus sai they 
that knew hir in hir youth. Albeit, some that now see hir, for she 
yet liveth, deem hir never to have been well visaged. Now is she old, 
leane, withered, and dried up : nothing left but shrivelled skin and 
hard bone ; and yet, being even such, whoso well advise her visage, 
might gesse and devise, winch parts how filled, would make it a faire 
face.'"* 

To these pictures, which are all drawn with spirit, may be 
added a portrait in the notes to Drayton's Heroical Epistles, 
referring to the one by Sir Thomas More. 

" Her stature," says the comment, " was mean ; her hair of a dark 
yellow, her face round and full, her eye grey, delicate harmony being 
betwixt each part's proportion, and each proportion's colour ; her 
body fat, white, and smooth ; her countenance cheerful, and like to 
her condition. That picture which I have seen of her, was such as 
she rose out of her bed in the morning, having nothing on but a rich 
mantle, cast under her arm, over her shoulder, and sitting in a chair 
on which her naked arm did lie. What her father's name was, or 
where she was born, is not certainly known; but Shore, a young man 
of right goodly person, wealth, and behaviour, abandoned her bed, after 
the King had made her his concubine."f 

Richard, in the extreme consciousness of his being in the 
wrong, made a sad bungling business of his first attempts on 
the throne. The penance of Jane Shore was followed by 
Dr. Shawe's sermon at the same cross, in which the servile 
preacher attempted to bastardise the children of Edward, and 
to recommend the " legitimate" Eichard, as the express image 

* Some account of London, third edition, p. 394, 
f Chalmers's British Poets, vol. iv., p. 91. 



SEE-SAW OF POPERY AND PROTESTANTISM. 43 

of his father. Richard made his appearance, only to witness 
the sullen silence of the spectators ; and the doctor, arguing 
more weakness than wickedness, took to his house, and soon 
after died.* 

In the reign of the Tudors, Paul's Cross was the scene of 
a very remarkable series of contradictions. The government, 
under Henry the Eighth, preached for and against the same 
doctrines in religion. Mary furiously attempted to revive 
them ; and they were finally denounced by Elizabeth. 
Wolsey began, in 1521, with fulminating, by command of the 
Pope, against "one Martin Eleutherius" (Luther). The 
denouncement was made by Fisher (afterwards beheaded for 
denying the King's supremacy) ; but Wolsey sate by, in his 
usual state, censed and canopied, with the pope's ambassador 
on one side of him, and the emperor's on the other. During 
the sermon a collection of Luther's books was burnt in the 
churchyard ; " which ended, my Lord Cardinal went home 
to dinner with all the other prelates." f About ten years 
afterwards the preachers at Paul's Cross received an order 
from the King to " teach and declare to the people, that 
neither the pope, nor any of his predecessors, were anything 
more than the simple Bishops of Eome." On the accession of 
Mary, the discourses were ordered to veer directly round, 
which produoed two attempts to assassinate the preachers in 
sermon-time ; and the moment Elizabeth came to the throne, 
the divines began recommending the very opposite tenets, and 
the pope was finally rejected. At this Cross Elizabeth after- 
wards attended to hear a thanksgiving sermon for the defeat 
of the Invincible Armada ; on which occasion a coach was 
first seen in England — the one she came in. The last sermon 
attended there by the sovereign was during the reign of her 
successor ; but discourses continued to be delivered up to the 
time of the Civil Wars, when, after being turned to account 
by the Puritans for about a year, the pulpit was demolished 

* "After which, once ended/' says Stow, "the preacher gat him 
home, and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of 
sight like an owle; and when he once asked one that had been his 
olde friende, what the people talked of him, all were it that his own 
conscience well shewed him that they talked no good, yet when the 
other answered him, that there was in every man's mouth spoken of 
him much shame, it so strake him to the hart, that in a few daies 
alter, he withered, and consumed away." — Bray ley, vol. i., p. 312. 

f From a MS. in the British Museum, quoted by Brayley, vol, ii., 
p. 312, 



44 THE CHARNEL. 

by order of Parliament. The " willing instrument" of the 
overthrow was Pennington, the lord-mayor. The inhabitants 
who look out of their windows now-a-days on the northern 
side of St. Paul's may thus have a succession of pictures 
before their mind's eye, as curious and inconsistent as those 
of a dream — princes, queens, lord-mayors, and aldermen, 

A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings, 
Jane's penance, Richard's chagrin, Wolsey's exaltation, clergy- 
men preaching for and against the pope ; a coach coming 
as a wonder, where coaches now throng at every one's service ; 
and finally, a puritanical lord-mayor, who " blasphemed 
custard," laying the axe to the tree, and cutting down the 
pulpit and all its works. 

The next appendage to the old church, in point of import- 
ance, was the Bishop's or London House, the name of which 
survives in that of London House Yard. This, with other 
buildings, perished in the Great Fire ; and on the site of it 
were built the houses now standing between the yard just 
mentioned and the present Chapter House. The latter was 
built by Wren. The old one stood on the other side of the 
cathedral, where the modern deanery is to be found, only 
more eastward. The bishop's house was often used for the 
reception of princes. Edward the Third and his queen were 
entertained there after a great tournament in Smithfield ; and 
there poor little Edward the Fifth was lodged, previously to 
his appointed coronation. To the east of the bishop's house, 
stretching towards Cheapside, was a chapel, erected by the 
father of Thomas Becket, called Pardon- Church -Haugh, 
which was surrounded by a cloister, presenting a painting of 
the Dance of Death on the walls, a subject rendered famous 
by Holbein.* 

Another chapel called the Charnel, a proper neighbour to 
this fresco, stood at the back of the two buildings just men- 
tioned. It received its name from the quantity of human 
bones collected from St. Paul's Churchyard, and deposited in 
a vault beneath. The Charnel was taken down by the 

* A Dance of Death (for the subject was often repeated) is a pro- 
cession of the various ranks of life, from the pope to the peasant, each 
led by a skeleton for his partner. Holbein enlarged it by the addi- 
tion of a series of visits privately paid by Death to the individuals. 
The figurantes, in his work, by no means go down the dance " with 
an air of despondency," The human beings are unconscious of their 
partners (which is fine); and the Deaths are as jolly as skeletons well 
can be. 



THE LOLLARDS' TOWER. 45 

Protector Somerset about 1549, and the stones were employed 
in the building of the new palace of Somerset House. On 
this occasion it is stated that more than a thousand cart-loads 
of bones were removed to Finsbury Fields where they formed 
a large mount, on which three windmills were erected. From 
these Windmill Street in that neighbourhood derives its 
name. The ground on which the chapel stood was afterwards 
built over with dwellings and warehouses, having sheds before 
them for the use of stationers. Immediately to the north of 
St. Paul's School, and towards the spot where the churchyard 
looks into Cheapside, was a campanile, or bell-house ; that is 
to say, a belfry, forming a distinct building from the cathedral, 
such as it is accustomed to be in Italy. It was by the ring- 
ing of this bell that the people were anciently called together 
to the general assemblage, called the Folkmote. The cam- 
panile was very high, and was won at dice from King Henry 
the Eighth by Sir Miles Partridge, who took it down and sold 
the materials. On the side of the cathedral directly the 
reverse of this (the south-west), and forming a part of the 
great pile of building, was the parish church of St. Gregory, 
over which was the Lollards' Tower, or prison, infamous, 
like its namesake at Lambeth, for the ill-treatment of 
heretics. 

" This," says Brayley, on the authority of Fox's Martyrology, 
"was the scene of at least one 'foul and midnight murder,' perpe- 
trated in 1514, on a respectable citizen, named Richard Hunne, by 
Dr. Horsey, chancellor of the diocese, with the assistance of a bell- 
ringer, and afterwards defended by the Bishop Fitz-James and the 
whole body of prelates, who protected the murderers from punish- 
ment, lest the clergy should become amenable to civil jurisdiction. 
Though the villains, through this interference, escaped without cor- 
poral suffering, the King ordered them to pay 1,500/. to the children 
of the deceased, in restitution of what he himself styles the ' cruel 
murder.' " * 

The clergy, with almost incredible audacity, afterwards 
commenced a process against the dead body of Hunne for 
heresy ; and, having obtained its condemnation, they actually 
burned it in Smithfield. The Lollards' Tower continued to 
be used as a prison for heretics for some time after the Refor- 
mation. Stow tells us that he recollected one Peter Burchet, a 
gentleman of the Middle Temple, being committed to this 
prison, on suspicion of holding certain erroneous opinions, in 
1573. This, however, is, we believe, the last case of the 
kind that is recorded. 

* Brayley, toL h\, p. 320. 



46 st. Paul's school. 

It remains to say a word of St. Paul's School, founded, as 
we have already mentioned, by Dean Colet, and destined to 
become the most illustrious of all the buildings on the spot, 
in giving education to Milton. We have dwelt more upon 
the localities of St. Paul's Churchyard than it is our intention 
to do on others. The dignity of the birth-place of the metro- 
polis beguiled us ; and the events recorded to have taken 
place in it are of real interest. Milton was not the only 
person of celebrity educated at this school. Bentley, his 
critic, was probably induced by the like circumstance to turn 
his unfortunate attention to the poet's epic in after life, and 
make those gratuitous massacres of the text, which give a 
profound scholar the air of the most presumptuous of cox- 
combs. Here also Camden received part of his education ; 
and here were brought up, Leland, his brother antiquary, the 
Gales (Charles, Koger, and Samuel), all celebrated anti- 
quaries; Sir Anthony Denny, the only man who had the 
courage and honesty to tell Henry the Eighth that he was 
dying; Halley, the astronomer; Bishop Cumberland, the great 
grandfather of the dramatist; Pepys, who has lately obtained 
so curious a celebrity, as an annalist of the court of Charles 
the Second ; and last, not least, one in whom a learned educa- 
tion would be as little looked for as in Pepys, if we are to 
trust the stories of the times, to wit, John Duke of Marl- 
borough. Barnes was laughed at for dedicating his Anacreon 
to the duke, as one to whom Greek was unheard of ; and it 
has been related as a slur on the great general (though 
assuredly it is not so), that having alluded on some occasion 
to a passage in history, and being asked where he found it, 
he confessed that his authority was the only historian he was 
acquainted with, namely, William Shakspeare. 

Less is known of Milton during the time he passed at 
St. Paul's School, than of any other period of his life. It is 
ascertained, however, that he cultivated the writing of Greek 
verses, and was a great favourite with the usher, afterwards 
master, Alexander Gill, himself a Latin poet of celebrity. At 
the back of the old church was an enormous rose- window, 
which we may imagine the young poet to have contemplated 
with delight, in his fondness for ornaments of that cast ; and 
ihe whole building was calculated to impress a mind, more 
disposed, at that time of life, to admire as a poet, than to 
quarrel as a critic or a sectary. Gill, unluckily for himself, 
was not so catholic. Some say he was suspended from his 



DESCRIPTION OF THE CATHEDRAL. 47 

mastership for severity ; a quality which he must have carried 
to a great pitch, for that age to find fault with it ; but from 
an answer written by Ben Johnson to a fragment of a satire of 
Gill's, it is more likely he got into trouble for libels against 
the court. Aubrey says, that the old doctor, his father, was 
once obliged to go on his knees to get the young doctor par- 
doned, and that the offence consisted in his having written a 
letter, in which he designated King James and his son, as the 
" old foole and the young one." There are letters written in 
early life from Milton to Gill, full of regard and esteem ; nor 
is it likely that the regard was diminished by Gill's petulance 
against the Court. In one of the letters, it is pleasant to hear 
the poet saying, " Farewell, and on Tuesday next expect me 
in London, among the booksellers." * 

The parliamentary soldiers annoyed the inhabitants of the 
churchyard, by playing at nine-pins at unseasonable hours — 
a strange misdemeanour for that " church militant." They 
hastened also the destruction of the cathedral. Some scaffold- 
ing, set up for repairs, had been given them for arrears of 
pay. They dug pits in the body of the church to saw the 
timber in ; and they removed the scaffolding with so little 
caution, that great part of the vaulting fell in, and lay a heap 
of ruins. The east end only, and a part of the choir con- 
tinued to be used for public worship, a brick wall being raised 
to separate this portion from the rest of the building, and the 
congregation entering and getting out through one of the 
north windows. Another part of the church was converted 
into barracks and stables for the dragoons. As for Inigo 
Jones's lofty and beautiful portico, it was turned into " shops," 
says Maitland, " for milliners and others, with rooms over 
them for the convenience of lodging ; at the erection of which 
the magnificent columns were piteously mangled, being 
obliged to make way for the ends of beams, which penetrated 
their centres." j" The statues on the top were thrown down 
and broken to pieces. 

We have noticed the lucky necessity for a new church, 
occasioned by the Great Fire. An attempt was at first made 

* See Todd's Milton, vol. vii. ; Aubrey's Letters and Lives ; and 
Ben Jonson's Poems. Gill's specimen of a satire is very bad, and the 
great laureate's answer is not much better. The first couplet of the 
latter, however, is to the purpose : — 

" Shall the prosperity of a pardon still 
Secure thy railing rhymes, infamous Gill?" 
f History of London, vol. ii., p. 1106. 



48 SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 

to repair the old building — the work, as we have already 
mentioned, being committed to the charge of Sir John Den- 
ham (the poet), his Majesty's surveyor-general. But it was 
eventually found necessary to commence a new edifice from 
the foundation. Sir Christopher Wren, who accomplished 
this task, had been before employed in superintending the 
repairs, and was appointed head surveyor of the works in 
1669, on the demise of Denham. Unfortunately, he had 
great and ungenerous trouble given him in the erection of the 
new structure ; and, after all, he did not build it as he wished. 
His taste was not understood, either by court or clergy ; he 
was envied (and towards the close of his life Ousted) by inferior 
workmen ; was forced to make use of two orders instead of 
one, that is to say, to divide the sides and front into two 
separate elevations, instead of running them up and dignifying 
them with pillars of the whole height; and during the whole 
work, which occupied a great many years, and took up a con- 
siderable and anxious portion of his time, not unattended 
with personal hazard, all the pay which he was then, or ever 
to expect, was a pittance of two hundred a-year. A moiety 
of this driblet was for some time actually suspended, till the 
building should be finished ; and for the arrears of it he was 
forced to petition the government of Queen Anne, and then 
only obtained them under circumstances of the most unhand- 
some del.iy. Wren, however, was a philosopher and a patriot ; 
and if he underwent the mortification attendent on philoso- 
phers and patriots, for offending the self-love of the shallow, 
he knew how to act up to the spirit of those venerable names, 
in the interior of a mind as elevated and well-composed 
as his own architecture. Some pangs he felt, because he was 
a man of humanity, and could not disdain his fellow-creatures ; 
but he was more troubled for the losses of the art than his 
own. He is is said actually to have shed tears when com- 
pelled to deform his cathedral with the side aisles — some say 
in compliance with the will of the Duke of York, afterwards 
James the Second, who anticipated the use of them for the 
restoration of the old Catholic chapels. Money he despised, 
except for the demands of his family, consenting to receive a 
hundred a-year for rebuilding such of the city churches (a 
considerable number) as were destroyed by the fire ! And 
when finally ousted from his office of surveyor-general, he 
said with the ancient sage, "Well, I must philosophise a little 
sooner than I intended." (Nunc me jubet fortuna expeditius 



HIS MONUMENT, 49 

philosophari). The Duchess of Marlborough, in resisting the 
claims of one of her Blenheim surveyors, said, " that Sir C. 
"Wren was content to be dragged up in a basket three times 
a-week to the top of St. Paul's, at a great hazard, for 200Z. a- 
year." But, as a writer of his life has remarked, she was 
perhaps "little capable of drawing any nice distinction 
between the feelings of the hired surveyor of Blenheim, and 
those of our architect, in the contemplation of the rising of 
the fabric which his vast genius was calling into existence: 
her notions led her to estimate the matter by the simple 
process of the rule of three direct ; and on this principle she 
had good reason to complain of the surveyor." * The same 
writer tells us, that Wren's principal enjoyment during the 
remainder of his life, consisted in his being " carried once a 
year to see his great work ; " " the beginning and completion 
of which," observes Walpole, " was an event which, one could 
not wonder, left such an impression of content on the mind of 
the good old man, that it seemed to recall a memory almost 
deadened to every other use." The epitaph upon him by his 
son, which Mr. Mylne, the architect of Blackfriars' bridge, 
caused to be rescued from the vaults underneath the church, 
where it was ludicrously inapplicable, and placed in gold 
letters over the choir, has a real sublimity in it, though 
defaced by one of those plays upon words, which were the 
taste of the times in the architect's youth, and which his 
family perhaps had learnt to admire. 

Subtus conditur 
Hujus ecclesise et urbis conditor 

Ch. Wren, 
Qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, 
Non sibi sed bono publico. 
Lector, si monumentum requiris, 
Circumspice. 

We cannot preserve the pun in English, unless, perhaps, 
by some such rendering as, " Here found a grave the founder 
of this church ;" or " Underneath is founded the tomb," &c. 
The rest is admirable : 

"Who lived to the age of upwards of ninety years, 
Not for himself, but for the public good. 
Reader, if thou seekest his monument, 
Look around." ^ 

The reader does look around, and the whole interior of the 

* Life of Sir Christoper Wren, in the Library of Useful Know- 
ledge, No. 24, p. 27. 

E 



50 IRREVERENT REMARKS ON 

cathedral, which is finer than the outside, seems like a 
magnificent vault over his single bod}'. The effect is very 
grand, especially if the organ is playing. A similar one, as 
far as the music is concerned, is observable when we con- 
template the statues of Nelson and others. The grand repose 
of the church, in the first instance, gives them a mortal 
dignity, which the organ seems to waken up and revive, as if 
in the midst of the 

" Pomp and threatening harmony,"* 

their spirits almost looked out of their stony and sightless 
eyeballs. Johnson s ponderous figure looks down upon us 
with something of sourness in the expression; and in the 
presence of Howard we feel as if pomp itself were in atten- 
dance on humanity. It is a pity that the sculpture of the 
monuments in general is not worthy of these emotions, and 
tends to undo them. 

A poor statue of Queen Anne, in whose reign the church 
was finished, stands in the middle of the front area, with the 
figures of Britain, France, Ireland, and America, round the 
base. Garth, who was a Whig, and angry with the councils 
which had dismissed his hero Marlborough, wrote some bitter 
lines upon it, which must have had double effect, coming from 
so good-natured a man. 

Near the vast bulk of that stupendous frame, 
Known by the Gentiles' great apostle's name, 
With grace divine great Anna's seen to rise, 
An awful form that glads a nation's eyes: 
Beneath her feet four mighty realms appear, 
And with due reverence pay their homage there. 
Britain and Ireland seem to own her grace, 
And e'en wild India wears a smiling face. 
But France alone with downcast eyes is seen, 
The sad attendant on so good a queen. 
Ungrateful country! to forget so soon 
All that great Anna for thy sake has done, 
When sworn the kind defender of thy cause, 
Spite of her dear religion, spite of laws, 
For thee she sheath'd the terrors of her sword, 
For thee she broke her gen'ral — and her word: 
For thee her mind in doubtful terms she told, 
And learn'd to speak like oracles of old : 
For thee, for thee alone, what could she more ? 
She lost the honour she had gain'd before; 
Lost all the trophies which her arms had won, 
(Such Caesar never knew, nor Philip's son ;) 

* Wordsworth, 



THE STATUE OF QUEEN ANNE. 51 

Eesign'd the glories of a ten years' reign, 

And such as none but Marlborough's arm could gain : 

For thee in annals she's content to shine, 

Like other monarchs of the Stuart line. 

Many irreverent remarks were also made by the coarser 
wits of the day, in reference to the position of her Majesty, 
with her back to the church and her face to a brandy shop, 
which was then kept in that part of the churchyard. The 
calumny was worthy of the coarseness. Anne, who was not 
a very clever woman, had a difficult task to perform; and 
though we differ with her politics, we cannot, even at this 
distance of time, help expressing our disgust at personalities 
like these, especially against a female. 




£ 2 



52 



CHAPTER II. 
ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 

The Church of St. Eaith — Booksellers of the Churchyard — Mr. John- 
son's — Mr. Newberry's — Children's Books — Clerical Names of 
Streets near St. Paul's — Swift at the top of the Cathedral — Dr. 
Johnson at St. Paul's — Paternoster Kow — Panyer's Alley — 
Stationers' Hall — Almanacks — Knight-Riders' Street — Armed 
Assemblies of the Citizens — Doctor's Commons — The Heralds' 
College— Coats of Arms — Ludgate— Story of Sir Stephen Forster 

Prison of Ludgate — Wyatt's Rebellion — The Belle Sauvage Inn 

Blackfriars — Shakspeare's Theatre — Accident at Blackfriars in 

1623 — Printing House Square — The Times— Baynard's Castle — 
Story of the Baron Fitzwalter — Richard III. and Buckingham — 
Diana's Chamber — The Royal Wardrobe — Marriages in the Eleet — 
Fleet Ditch— The Dunciad. 

E remember, in our boyhood, a romantic 
story of a church that stood under St. 
Paul's. We conceived of it, as of a real 
good - sized church actually standing 
under the other; but how it came there 
nobody could imagine. It was some 
ghostly edification of providence, not 
lightly to be inquired into ; but as its 
name was St. Faith's, we conjectured that the mystery had 
something to do with religious belief. The mysteries of art 
do not remain with us for life, like those of Nature. Our 
phenomenon amounted to this : 

"The church of St. Faith," says Brayley, "was originally a 
distinct building, standing near the east end of St. Paul's; but when 
the old cathedral was enlarged, between the years 1256 and 1312, it 
was taken doAvn, and an extensive part of the vaults was appropriated 
to the use oi the parishioners of St. Faith's, in lieu of the demolished 
fabric. This was afterwards called the church of St. Faith in the 
Crypts (Ecclesia Sanctce Fidei in Cryptis) and, according to a repre- 
sentation made to the Dean and Chapter, in the year 1735, it measured 
180 feet in length, and 80 in breath. After the fire of London, the 
parish of St. Faith was joined to that of St. Augustine ; and on the 
rebuilding of the cathedral, a portion of the churchyard belonging to 
the former was taken to enlarge the avenue round the east end of 
St. Paul's, and the remainder was inclosed within the cathedral 
railing." * 

The parishioners of St. Faith have still liberty to bury 
their dead in certain parts of the churchyard and the Crypts. 
* Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303. 




MR. JOHNSON. — MR. NEWBERRY. 53 

Other portions of the latter have been used #s storehouses 
for wine, stationery, &c. The stationers and booksellers of 
London, during the fire, thought they had secured a great 
quantity of their stock in this place ; but on the air being 
admitted when they went to take them out, the goods had 
been so heated by the conflagration of the church overhead, 
that they took fire at last, and the whole property was 
destroyed. Clarendon says it amounted to the value of two 
hundred thousand pounds.* 

One of the houses on the site of the old episcopal mansion, 
now converted into premises occupied by Mr. Hitchcock the 
linendraper, was Mr. Johnson's the bookseller — a man who 
deserves mention for his liberality to Cowper, and for the 
remarkable circumstance of his never having seen the poet, 
though his intercourse with him was long and cordial. Mr. 
Johnson was in conection with a circle of men of letters, 
some of whom were in the habit of dining with him once a 
week, and who comprised the leading polite writers of the 
generation — Cowper, Darwin, Hayley, Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Bar- 
bauld, Godwin, &c. Fuseli must not be ommitted, who was 
at least as good a writer as a painter. Here Bonnycastle 
hung his long face over his plate, as glad to escape from 
arithmetic into his jokes and his social dinner as a great 
boy ; and here Wordsworth, and we believe Coleridge, 
published their earliest performances. At all events they 
both visited at the house. 

But the most illustrious of all booksellers in our boyish 
days, not for his great names, not for his dinners, not for 
his riches that we know of, nor for any other full-grown 
celebrity, but for certain little penny books, radiant with gold 
and rich with bad pictures, was Mr. Newberry, the famous 
children's bookseller, "at the corner of St. Paul's church- 
yard," next Ludgate Street. The house is still occupied by 
a successor, and children may have books there as formerly 
■ — but not the same. The gilding, we confess, we regret: 
gold, somehow, never looked so well as in adorning litera- 
ture. The pictures also — may we own that we preferred the 
uncouth coats, the staring blotted eyes, and round piece s of 
rope for hats, of our very badly drawn contemporaries, to all 
the proprieties of modern embellishment ? We own the 
superiority of the latter, and would have it proceed and 
prosper; but a boy of our own time was much, though hie 
* In his Life, vol. iii., p. 98. Edit. 1827. 



54 children's books. 

coat looked like his grandfather's. The engravings probably 
were of that date. Enormous, however, is the improvement 
upon the morals of these little books; and there we give 
them up, and with unmitigated delight. The good little boy, 
the hero of the infant literature in those days, stood, it must 
be acknowledged, the chance of being a very selfish man. 
His virtue consisted in being different from some other little 
boy, perhaps his brother; and his rewaid was having a fine 
coach to ride in, and being a King Pepin. JSTow-a-days, 
since the world has had a great moral earthquake that set it 
thinking, the little boy promises to be much more of a 
man ; thinks of others, as well as works for himself; and 
looks for his reward to a character for good sense and benefi- 
cence. In no respect is the progress of the age more visible, or 
more importantly so, than in this apparently trifling matter. 
The most bigoted opponents of a rational education are obliged 
to adopt a portion of its spirit, in order to retain a hold which 
their own teaching must accordingly undo : and if the times 
were not full of hopes in other respects, we should point to 
this evidence of their advancement, and be content with it. 

One of the most pernicious mistakes of the old children's 
books, was the inculcation of a spirit of revenge and cruelty 
in the tragic examples which were intended to deter their 
readers from idleness and disobedience. One, if he did not 
behave himself, was to be shipwrecked, and eaten by lions; 
another to become a criminal, who was not to be taught 
better, but rendered a mere wicked contrast to the luckier 
virtue; and, above all, none were to be poor but the vicious, 
and none to ride in their coaches but little Sir Charles 
Grandisons, and all-perfect Sheriffs. "We need not say how 
contrary this was to the real spirit of Christianity, which, at 
the same time, they so much insisted on. The perplexity in 
after life, when reading of poor philosophers and rich vicious 
men, was in proportion; or rather virtue and mere worldly 
success became confounded. In the present day, the profi- 
tableness of good conduct is still inculcated, but in a sounder 
spirit. Charity makes the proper allowance for all ; and none 
are excluded from the hope of being wiser and happier. Men, 
in short are not taught to love and labour for themselves alone 
or for their little dark corners of egotism ; but to take the 
world along with them into a brighter sky of improvement ; 
and to discern the want of success in success itself, if not 
accompanied by a liberal knowledge. 



CLERICAL NAMES OF STREETS. 53 

The Seven Champions of Christendom, Valentine and Orson, 
and other books of the fictitious class, which have survived 
their more rational brethren (as the latter thought them- 
selves), are of a much better order, and, indeed, survive by a 
natural instinct in society to that effect. With many absurd- 
ities, they have a general tone of manly and social virtue, 
■which may be safely left to itself. The absurdities wear out 
and the good remains. Nobody in these times will think 
of meeting giants and dragons; of giving blows that con- 
found an army, or tearing the hearts out of two lions on each 
side of him, as easily as if he were dipping his hands into a 
lottery. But there are still giants and wild beasts to en- 
counter, of another sort, the conquest of which requires the 
old enthusiasm and disinterestedness ; arms and war are to be 
checked in their career, and have been so, by that new might 
of opinion to which every body may contribute much in his 
single voice ; and wild men, or those who would become so, 
are tamed, by education and brotherly kindness, into orna- 
ments of civil life. 

The neighbourhood of St. Paul's retains a variety of appel- 
lations indicative of its former connection with the church. 
There is Creed Lane, Ave-Maria Lane, Sermon Lane*, 
Canon Alley, Pater-Noster Eow, Holiday Court, Amen 
Corner, &c. Members of the Cathedral establishment still 
have abodes in some of these places, particularly in Amen 
Corner, which is enclosed with gates, and appropriated to the 
houses of prebendaries and canons. Close to Sermon Lane is 
Do -little Lane; a vicinity which must have furnished jokes 
to the Puritans. Addle Street is an ungrateful corruption of 
Athelstan Street, so called from one of the most respectable of 
the Saxon kings, who had a palace in it. 

We have omitted to notice a curious passage in Swift, in 
which he abuses himself for going to the top of St. Paul's. 
" To-day," says he, writing to Stella, " I was all about St. 
Paul's, and up at the top like a fool, with Sir Andrew 
Fountain, and two more; and spent seven shillings for my 
dinner, like a puppy." " This," adds the doctor, " is the 

* Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that 
Sermon Lane is a corruption of Sheremoniers Lane, that is, the lane of 
the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was 
to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in 
this lane for melting silver, called the Blackloft — and the Mint was in 
the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood. 
See Maitland, ii., 880 (edit, of 175G.) 



*6 DR. JOHNSON AT ST. PAULAS. 

second time he has served me so : but I will never do it 
again, though all mankind should persuade me — unconsidering 
puppies ! " * The being forced by richer people than one's 
self to spend money at a tavern might reasonably be lamented; 
but from the top of St. Paul's Swift beheld a spectacle, which 
surely was not unworthy of his attention ; perhaps it affected 
him too much. The author of Gulliver might have taken 
from it his notions of little bustling humankind. 

Dr. Johnson frequently attended public worship in St. Paul's. 
Very different must his look have been, in turning into 
the chancel, from the threatening and trampling aspect they 
have given him in his statue. We do not quarrel with his 
aspect ; there is a great deal of character in it. But the con- 
trast, considering the place, .is curious. A little before his 
death, when bodily decay made him less patient than ever of 
contradiction, he instituted a club at the Queen's Arms, in 
St. Paul's Churchyard. "He -told Mr. Hook," says Bos well, 
" That he wished to have a City Club, and asked him to 
collect one; but, said he, don't let them be patriots." f (This 
was an allusion to the friends of his acquaintance Wilkes.) 
Boswell accompanied him one day to the club, and found the 
members " very sensible well-behaved men : " that is to say 
Hook had collected a body of decent listeners. This, how- 
ever, is melancholy. In the next chapter we shall see Johnson 
in all his glory. 

St. Paul's Churchyard appears as if it were only a great 
commercial thoroughfare ; but if all the clergy could be seen 
at once, who have abodes in the neighbourhood, they would 
be found to constitute a numerous body. If to the sable 
coats of these gentlemen be added those of the practisers of 
the civil law, who were formerly allied to them, and who live 
in Doctors' Commons, the churchyard increases the clerkly 
part of its aspect. It resumes, to the imagination, some- 
thing of the learned and collegiate look it had of old. Pater- 
noster Row is said to have been so called on account of 
the number of Stationers or Text-writers that dwelt there, 
who dealt much in religious books, and sold horn-books, or 
ABC's, with the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, Creed, Graces, 
&c. And so of the other places above-named. But it is more 
likely that this particular street (as indeed we are told) was 

* Letters to Stella, in the duodecimo edition of his works, 1775. 
Letter vi., p. 43. 

f Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edition, vol. iv., p. 93. 



PATERNOSTER ROW. 57 

named from the rosary or paternoster-makers ; for so they 
were called, as appears by a record of " one Robert Nikke, a 
paternoster-maker and citizen, in the reign of Henry the 
Fourth." 

It is curious to reflect what a change has taken place in 
this celebrated book-street, since nothing was sold there but 
rosaries. It is but rarely the word Paternoster-Row strikes 
us as having a reference to the Latin Prayer. We think of 
booksellers' shops, and of all the learning and knowledge they 
have sent forth. The books of Luther, which Henry the 
Eighth burnt in the neighbouring churchyard, were turned 
into millions of volumes, partly by reason of that burning. 

Paternoster-Row, however, has not been exclusively in 
possession of the booksellers, since it lost its original tenants, 
the rosary-makers. Indeed it would appear to have been 
only in comparatively recent times that the booksellers fixed 
themselves there. They had for a long while been established 
in St. Paul's Churchyard, but scarcely in the Row, till after 
the commencement of the last century. 

"This street," says Maitland, writing in 1720, "before the fire o 
London, was taken up by eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen; 
and their shops were so resorted unto by the nobility and gentry in 
their coaches, that ofttimes the street was so stopped up, that there was 
no passage for foot passengers. But since the said fire, those eminent 
tradesmen have settled themselves in several other parts; especially 
in Ludgate Street, and in Bedford Street, Henrietta Street, and King 
Street, Covent Garden. And the inhabitants in this street are now a 
mixture of tradespeople, such as tire-women, or milliners, for the sale 
of top-knots, and the like dressings for the females." 

In a subsequent edition of his history, published in 1755, 
it is added, " There are now many shops of mercers, silkmen, 
eminent printers, booksellers, and publishers."* The most 
easterly of the narrow and partly covered passages between 
Newgate Street and Paternoster Row is that called Panyer's 
Alley, remarkable for a stone built into the wall of one of the 
houses on the east side, supporting the figures of a pannier 
or wicker basket, surmounted by a boy, and exhibiting the 
following inscription : — 

" When you have sought the city round, 
Yet still this is the highest ground." 

"We cannot say if absolute faith is to be put in this assevera- 
tion ; but it is possible. It has been said that the top of 
St. Paul's is on a level with that of Hampstead. 
* History of London, vol. ii., p. 925. 



58 stationers' hall. 

We look back a moment between Paternoster Row and the 
churchyard, to observe, that the only memorial remaining of 
the residence of the Bishop of London is a tablet in London- 
House Yard, let into the wall of the public house called the 
Goose and Gridiron. The Goose and Gridiron is said by 
tradition to have been what was called in the last century a 
" music house ;" that is to say, a place of entertainment with 
music. When it ceased to be musical, a landlord, in ridicule 
of its former pretensions, chose for his sign " a goose stroking 
the bars of a gridiron with his foot," and called it the Swan 
and Harp.* 

Between Amen Corner and Ludgate Street, at the end of a 
passage from Ave-Maria Lane, " stood a great house of stone 
and wood, belonging in old time to. John, Duke of Bretagne, 
and Earl of Richmond, cotemporary with Edward II. and III. 
After him it was possessed by the Earls of Pembroke, in the 
time of Richard II. and Henry IV., and was called Pembroke's 
Inn, near Ludgate. It then fell into the possession of the 
title of Abergavenny, and was called Burgavenny House, 
under which circumstances it remained in the time of Elizabeth. 
To finish the anti-climax," says Pennant, "it was finally 
possessed by the Company of Stationers, who rebuilt it of 
wood, and made it their Hall. It was destroyed by the Great 
Fire, and was succeeded by the present plain building." f Of 
the once-powerful possessors of the old mansion nothing now 
is remembered, or cared for; but in the interior of the 
modern building are to be seen, looking almost as if they 
were alive, and as if we knew them personally, the immortal 
faces of Steele and Richardson, Prior in his cap, and Dr. 
Hoadley, a liberal bishop. There is also Mrs. Richardson, 
the wife of the novelist, looking as prim and particular as if 
she had been just chucked under the chin ; and Robert 
Nelson, Esq., supposed author of the Whole Duty of Man, 
and prototype of Sir Charles Grandison, as regular and 
passionless in his face as if he had been made only to wear 
his wig. The same is not to be said of the face of Steele, 
with his black eyes and social aspect ; and still less of 
Richardson, who, instead of being the smooth, satisfied-looking 
personage he is represented in some engravings of him (which 
makes his heartrending romance appear unaccountable and 

* The Tatler. With notes historical, biographical, and critical 
6vo. 1797. Vol. iv., p. 20G. 
f Pennant's London, p. 377. 



PORTRAITS IN STATIONERS* HALL. 59 

cruel), has a face as uneasy as can well be conceived — flushed 
and shattered with emotion. We recognise the sensitive, 
enduring man, such as he really was — a heap of bad nerves. 
It is worth anybody's while to go to Stationers' Hall, on pur- 
pose to see these portraits. They are not of the first order as 
portraits, but evident likenesses. Hoadley looks at once jovial 
and decided, like a good-natured controversialist. Prior is 
not so pleasant as in his prints ; his nose is a little aquiline, 
instead of turned up ; and his features, though delicate, not 
so liberal. But if he has not the best look of his poetry, he 
has the worst. He seems as if he had been sitting up all 
night ; his eyelids droop : and his whole face is used with 
rakery. 

It is impossible to see Prior and Steele together, without 
regretting that they quarrelled : but as they did quarrel, it 
was fit that Prior should be in the wrong. From a Whig he 
had become a Tory, and showed that his change was not 
quite what it ought to have been, by avoiding the men with 
whom he had associated, and writing contemptuously of his 
fellow wits. All the men of letters, whose portraits are in 
this hall, were, doubtless, intimate with the premises, and 
partakers of Stationers' dinners. Richardson was Master of 
the Company. Morphew, a bookseller in the neighbourhood, 
was one of the publishers of the Tatler; and concerts as well 
as festive dinners used to take place in the great room, of both 
of which entertainments Steele was fond. It was here, if we 
mistake not, that one of the inferior officers of the Company, 
a humourist on sufferance, came in, one day, on his knees, at an 
anniversary dinner when Bishop Hoadley was present, in order 
to drink to the " Glorious Memory." * The company, Steele 
included, were pretty far gone ; Hoadley had remained as long 
as he well could; and the genuflector was drunk. Steele, 
seeing the Bishop a little disconcerted, whispered him, " Do 
laugh, my lord ; pray laugh: — 'tis humanity to laugh." The 
good-natured prelate acquiesced. Next day, Steele sent him 
a penitential letter, with the following couplet : — 

Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 

All faults he pardons, though he none commits. 

The most illustrious musical performance that ever took 
place in the hall was that of Dryden's Ode. A society for the 
annual commemoration of St. Cecilia, the patroness of music, 

* Of William IIL 



60 dryden's odes. 

was instituted iu the year 1680, not without an eye perhaps 
to the religious opinions of the heir presumptive who was 
shortly to ascend the throne as James the Second. An ode 
was written every year for the occasion, and set to music by 
some eminent composer ; and the performance of it was fol- 
lowed by a grand dinner. In 1687, Dryden contributed his 
first ode, entitled, "A Song for Saint Cecilia's Day," in 
which there are finer things than in any part of the other, 
though as a whole it is not so striking. Ten years after- 
wards it was followed by "Alexander's Feast," the dinner, 
perhaps, being a part of the inspiration. Poor Jeremiah 
Clarke, who shot himself for love, was the composer. * This 
is the ode with the composition of which Bolingbroke is said 
to have found Dryden in a state of emotion one morning, the 
whole night having been passed, agitante deo, under the fever 
of inspiration. 

From Stationers' Hall once issued all the almanacks that 
were published, with all the trash and superstition they kept 
alive. Francis Moore is still among their " living dead men." 
Francis must now be a posthumous old gentleman, of at least 
one hundred and fifty years of age. The first blunder the 
writers of these books committed, in their cunning, was the 
having to do with the state of the weather ; their next was to 
think that the grandmothers of the last century were as 
immortal as their title-pages, and that nobody was getting 
wiser than themselves. The mysterious solemnity of their 
hieroglyphics, bringing heaven and earth together, like a 
vision in the Apocalypse, was imposing to the nurse and the 
child ; and the bashfulness of their bodily sympathies no less 
attractive. We remember the astonishment of a worthy 
seaman, some years ago, at the claim which they put into 

* The genius of Clarke, which, agreeably to his unhappy end, was 
tender and melancholy, was unsuited to the livelier intoxication of 
Dryden's feast, afterwards gloriously set by Handel. Clarke has been 
styled the musical Otway of his time. He was organist at St. Paul's, 
and shot himself at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard. Mr. John 
Reading, organist of St. Dunstan's, who was intimately acquainted 
with him, was going by at the moment the pistol went off, and upon 
entering the house ''found his friend and fellow-student in the agonies 
of death." Another friend ol his, one of the lay vicars of the cathe- 
dral, relates of him, that a few weeks before the catastrophe, Clarke 
had alighted from his horse in a sequestered spot in the country, 
where there Avas a pond surrounded by trees, and not knowing whether 
to hang or drown himself, tossed up a piece of money to see which. 
The money stuck in the earth edgeways. Of this new chance for 
life, poor Clarke, we see, was unable to avail himself. 



DOCTORS' COMMONS, 61 

the mouth of the sign Virgo. The monopoly is now gone ; 
aiinanacks have been forced into improvement by emulation ; 
and the Stationers (naturally enough at the moment) are 
angry about it. This fit of ill humour will pass ; and a body 
of men, interested by their very trade in the progress of 
liberal knowledge, will by and by join the laugh at the ten- 
derness they evinced in behalf of old wives' fables. It is 
observable, that their friend Bickerstaff (Steele's assumed name 
in the Tatler) was the first to begin the joke against them. 

Knight-Riders' Street (Great and Little), on the south side 
of St. Paul's Churchyard, is said to have been named from 
the processions of Knights from the Tower to their place of 
tournament in Smithfield. It must have been a round-about 
way. Probably the name originated in nothing more than a 
sign, or from some reference to the Heralds' College in the 
neighbourhood. The open space, we may here notice, around 
the western extremity of the Cathedral, was anciently used by 
the citizens for assembling together " to make shew of their 
arms," or to hold what was called among the Scotch "a 
weapon shaw." A complaint was made by the Lord Mayor 
and the Ward, in the reign of Edward I., against the Dean 
and Chapter for having inclosed this ground, which they in- 
sisted was " the soil and lay-fee of our lord the King," by a 
mud wall, and covered part of it with buildings.* The houses 
immediately to the west of Creed Lane and Ave-Maria Lane 
probably occupy part of the space in question. 

Behind Great Knight-Riders' Street is Doctors' Commons, 
so called from the Doctors of Civil Law who dined together 
four days in each term. The Court of Admiralty is also 
there. The Admiralty judge is preceded by an officer with 
a silver oar. There is something pleasing in the parade of a 
civil officer, thus announced by a symbol representing the 
regulation of the most turbulent of elements. 

The civil and ecclesiastical lawyers, who connect the law 
with the church, had formerly much more to do than they 
have at present. The proctors (or attorneys) are said to have 
been so numerous and so noisy in the time of Henry VII., 
that the judge sometimes could not be heard for them. They 
thrust themselves into causes without the parties' consent, and 
shouldered the advocates out of their business. The diminu- 
tion of their body was owing to Cranmer. Doctors' Commons 
are of painful celebrity in the annals of domestic trouble, 
* See Maitland, vol. ii., p. 949, 



62 THE heralds' college. 

We have hardly perhaps among us a remnant of greater 
barbarism than " an action for damages,"* whether considered 
with a vieAv to recompense or prevention. Doctors' Commons 
bind as well as set loose. " Hence originates," says the 
facetious Mr. Malcolm, "the awful scrap of parchment, bear- 
ing the talismanic mark of John Cantuar (the Archbishop of 
Canterbury), which constitutes thousands of Benedicts the 
happiest or most miserable of married men: in short, it is the 
grand lottery of life, in which, fortunately, there are far more 
prizes than blanks." "j* The community ought to be thankful 
to Mr. Malcolm for this last piece of information, as there is 
a splenetic notion among them to the contrary. 

A history deeply interesting to human nature might be 
drawn up from the documents preserved in this place; for 
besides cases of personal infidelity, here are to be found others 
of infidelity religious, of blasphemy, simony, &c, together 
with romantic questions relative to kindred and succession ; 
and here are deposited those last specimens of human strength 
or weakness — last wills and testaments, together with cases in 
■which they have been contested. It was these records that 
furnished us with accounts of the latest days of Milton ; and 
that set the readers of -Shakspeare speculating why he should 
make no mention of his wife, except to leave her his " second 
best bed;" — a question most unexpectedly as well as happily 
cleared up by Mr. Charles Knight, who shows that the bequest 
was to the lady's honour. Of the practisers in the civil courts, 
we can call to mind nothing more worthy of recollection than 
the strange name of one of them, " Sir Julius Caesar," and 
the ruinous volatility of poor Dr. King, the Tory wit, who is 
conjectured to have been the only civilian that ever went to 
reside in Ireland, " after having experienced the emoluments 
of a settlement in Doctors' Commons." The doctor unfor- 
tunately practised too much with the bottle, which hindered 
him from adhering long to anything. 

Behind Little Knight-Eiders' Street, to the east of Doctors' 
Commons, is the Heralds' College. A gorgeous idea of colours 
falls on the mind in passing it, as from a cathedral window, 

" And shielded scutcheons blush with blood of queens and kings." 

Keats. 

* Since this was written, the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical 
Court in Doctors' Commons on matters of divorce has been transferred 
to a new " Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes," sitting at 
"Westminster. 

f Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 473. 



HERALDIC ATTIRE. 63 

The passenger, if he is a reader conversant with old times, 
thinks of bannered halls, of processions of chivalry, and of the 
fields of Cressy and Poictiers, with their vizored knights, 
distinguished by their coats and crests ; for a coat of arms is 
nothing but a representation of the knight himself, from whom 
the bearer is descended. The shield supposes his body ; there is 
the helmet for his head, with the crest upon it ; the flourish is 
his mantle ; and he stands upon the ground of his motto, or 
moral pretension. The supporters, if he is noble, or of a 
particular class of knighthood, are thought to be the pages 
that waited upon him, designated by the fantastic dresses of 
bear, lion, &c, which they sometimes wore. Heraldry is full 
of colour and imagery, and attracts the fancy like a " book of 
pictures." The Kings at Arms are romantic personages, 
really crowned, and have as mystic appellations as the kings 
of an old tale — Garter, Clarencieux, and Norroy. Norroy is 
King of the North, and Clarencieux (a title of Norman origin) 
of the South. The heralds, Lancaster, Somerset, &c, have 
simpler names,, indicative of the counties over which they 
preside ; but are only less gorgeously dressed than the kings, 
in emblazonment and satin ; and then there are the four 
pursuivants, Eonge Croix, Eouge Dragon, Portcullis, and 
Blue Mantle, with hues as lively, and appellations as quaint, 
as the attendants on a fairy court. For gorgeousness of 
attire, mysteriousness of origin, and in fact for similarity of 
origin (a knave being a squire), a knave of cards is not unlike 
a herald. A story is told of an Irish King at Arms,* who, 
waiting upon the Bishop of Killaloe to summon him to Par- 
liament, and being dressed, as the ceremony required, in his 
heraldic attire, so mystified the bishop's servant with his 
appearance, that not knowing what to make of it, and carry- 
ing off but a confused notion of his title, he announced him 
thus : " My lord, here is the King of Trumps." 

Mr. Pennant says, that the Heralds' College " is a foundation 
of great antiquity, in which the records are kept of all the old 
blood in the kingdom." But this is a mistake. Heralds, 
indeed, are of great antiquity, in the sense of messengers of 
peace and war ; but in the modern sense, they are no older 
than the reign of Edward III., and were not incorporated 
before that of the usurper Eichard. The house which they 
formerly occupied was a mansion of the Earls of Derby. It 

* On the authority of Langton, Johnson's friend. See Memoirs, 
Anecdotes, &c., by Letitia Matilda Hawkins, vol. i., p. 293. 



64 COATS OF ARMS, 

was burnt in the Great Fire, and succeeded by the present 
building, part of which was raised at the expense of some of 
their officers. As to their keeping records of " all the old 
blood in the kingdom," they may keep them, or not, as they 
have the luck to find them ; but the blood was old, before 
they had anything to do with it. Men bore arms and crests 
when there were no officers to register them. This, as a 
writer in the Censura Literaria observes, justly diminishes the 
pretension they set up, that no arms are of authority which 
have not been registered among their archives. 

"If this doctrine," says he, " were just, the consequence would be, 
that arms of comparatively modern invention are of better authority 
than those which a man and his ancestors have borne from times 
before the existence of the College of Arms, and for time immemorial, 
supported by the evidence of ancient seals, funeral monuments, and 
other authentic documents. Surely this is grossly absurd ; and the 
more absurd, if we consider that the heralds seem originally not to 
have been instituted for the manufacturing of armorial ensigns, but 
for the recording those ensigns which had been borne by men of 
honourable lineage, and which might, therefore, be borne by their 
posterity. Perhaps it would not be too much to presume, that it will 
be found on inquiry, that there are no grants of arms by the English 
Heralds of any very high antiquity ; and that the most ancient which 
can be produced, either in the original or in well-authenticated copies, 
are of a date when the general use of seals of arms, circumscribed 
with the names and titles of the bearers, was wearing away."* 

We learn from the same writer, that the value of 'a 
painted shield of parchment" is fifty pounds. Of the spirit 
in which these things have been done, the reader may judge 
from a letter written by an applicant to one of the most 
respectable names in the college list. His object was to get the 
illegitimate coat of a female friend changed to one by which 
it was to appear she was not illegitimate. He offers five 
pounds for it ; and adds, that there is another friend of his, 
*' an alderman's son, in Chester, whose great-grandfather was 
baseborn, whom I have bine treating with severall tymes 
about the alteration of his coat, telling him for 10 11 and not 
under, it may be accomplished ; five he is willing to give, but 
not above ; if you please to accept of that sume, you may 
writt me a line or two. I desire that you will send the scroll 
down again, as soon as you can."! 

* Censura Literaria, vol. iii., p. 254. 

•f Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir William Dugdale, by 
Hamper. Lond. 1827. Our memorandum has omitted the page. 
The letter was written to Dugdale by Randall Holme, a brother 
herald. 



COATS OF ARMS, 65 

The truth, is, that, except as far as their records go, and 
as they can be turned to account in questions of kindred and 
inheritance, the heralds are of no importance in modern times. 
Nor have they anything to do with the spirit and first prin- 
ciples of the devices, of which they assume the direction. 
We think this is worth notice, because heraldry itself, or at 
least the discussion of coats of arms, of which most people 
are observed to be fonder than they choose to confess, might 
be reconciled to the progress of knowledge, or made, at any 
rate, the ground of a pleasing and not ungraceful novelty. 
To a coat of arms no man, literally speaking, has pretensions, 
who is not the representative of somebody that bore arms 
in the old English wars ; but when the necessity for military 
virtue decreased, arms gave way to the gown ; and shields had 
honourable, but fantastic augmentations, for the peaceful 
triumphs of lawyers and statesmen. Meanwhile commerce 
was on the increase, and there came up a new power in the 
shape of pounds, shillings, and pence, which was to be repre- 
sented also by its coat of arms ; how absurdly, need not be 
added ; though the individuals who got their lions and their 
shields behind the counter, were often excellent men, who 
might have cut as great a figure in battle as the best, had 
they lived in other times. At length, not to have a military 
coat was to be no gentleman ; and then the heralds fairly sold 
achievements at so much the head. They received their fees, 
put on their spectacles, turned over their books like astro- 
logers, and found that you were deserving of a bear's paw, or 
might clap three puppies on your coach. " Congreve," says 
Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, " gave me a Tatler he 
had written out, as blind as he is, for little Harrison. 'Tis 
about a scoundrel that was grown rich, and went and bought 
a coat of arms at the heralds', and a set of ancestors at Fleet 
Ditch." And this is the case at present. Numbers of per- 
sons do not, however, stand on this ceremony with the heralds. 
Many are content to receive their exploits, at half-a-guinea 
the set, from pretenders who undertake to " procure arms ;" 
and many more assume the arms nearest to their name and 
family, or invent them at once ; naturally enough concluding, 
that they might as well achieve their own glories, as buy them 
of an old gentleman or a pedlar. 

Now arms were not originally given ; they were assumed* 
Men in battle, when armies fought pell-mell, and bodily 
prowess was more in request than it is now, wished to have 

F 



66 COATS OF ARMS. 

their persons distinguished ; and accordingly they put a de- 
vice en their shield, or some towering symbol on their 
helmet. This at once served to mark out the bearer, and to 
express the particular sentiment or alliance upon which he 
was to be understood as priding himself. The real spirit of 
heraldry consisted, therefore, and must always consist, in dis- 
tinguishing one person from another, and in expressing his 
individual sentiments ; and as the adoption of some device is 
both an elegant exercise of the fancy, and acts as a kind of 
memento to the conscience, tending to keep us to what we 
profess, people who have no certain arms of their own, or who 
do not care for them if they have, might not ungracefully or 
even uselessly entertain themselves with doing, in their 
own persons, what the old assumers of arms did in theirs; 
that is to say, invent their own distinctions. The emblazon- 
ment might amuse their fancies, and be put in books, or else- 
where, like other coats of arms ; and a little difference in 
the mode of it could easily set aside the interference of the 
heralds. People might thus express their views in life, or 
their particular tastes and opinions ; and the " science of 
heraldry," which has been so much laughed at, not always 
"with justice, be made to accord with the progress of know- 
ledge — or, at all events, with the entertaining part of it. 

As to coats of arms really ancient, or connected with old 
virtue, or with modern, we have already shown that we 
are far from pretending to despise anything which indulges 
the natural desire of mortality to extend or to elevate its 
sense of existence. We have no respect for shields of no 
meaning, or for bearers of better shields that disgrace them ; 
but we do not profess to look without interest on very old 
shields, if only for the sake of their antiquity, much less 
when they are associated with names, 

Familiar in our mouths as household words. 
The lions and stags, &c, of the Howards and Herberts, of the 
Cavendishes, Russells, and Spencers, affect us more than those 
of Cuvier himself, especially when we recollect they were 
borne by great writers as well as warriors, men who advanced 
not only themselves but their species in dignity. The most 
interesting coats of arms, next to those which unite antiquity 
with ability (that is to say, duration backward with duration 
and utility in prospect), are such as become ennobled by 
genius, or present us with some pleasing device. Such is 
the spear of Shakspeare, whose ancestors are thought to have 



COATS OF ARMS. 67 

won it m Bosworth field ; * the spread eagle of Milton — a 
proper epic device : the flower given to Linnzeus for a device 
when he was ennobled ; the philosophical motto of the great 
Bacon, Mediocria firma (Mediocre things firm — the Golden 
Mean) ; the modest, yet self-respecting one, first used, we 
believe, by Sir Philip Sydney, Vix ea nostra voco (I scarcely 
call these things one's own) ; and those other mottoes, taken 
from favourite classics, which argue more taste than anti- 
quity. We are not sorry, however, for mere antiquity's sake, 
to recognise the ship of the Campbells ; the crowned heart (a 
beautiful device) of Douglas ; and even the checquers of the 
unfortunate family of the Stuarts. They tell us of names 
and connections, and call to mind striking events in history. 
Indeed, all ancient names naturally become associated with 
history and poetry. The most interesting coat in Scottish 
heraldry, if we are to believe tradition, is that of Hay, Earl 
of Errol ; whose ancestors, a couple of peasants, with their 
father, rallied an army of their countrymen in a narrow pass, 
and led them back victoriously against the Danes. Two 
peasants are the supporters of the shield. But unques- 
tionably the most interesting sight in the whole circle of 
heraldry, British or foreign, if we consider the rational popu- 
larity of its origin, and the immense advance it records in 
the progress of what is truly noble, is that of the plain 
English motto assumed by Lord Erskine, Trial by Jury. 
The devices of the Nelsons and Wellingtons, illustrious as 
they are, are nothing to this ; for the world might relapse 
into barbarism, as it has formerly done, notwithstanding the 
exploits of the greatest warriors ; but words like these are 
trophies of the experience of ages, and the world could not 
pass them, and go back again, for very shame. It is the 
fashion now-a-days to have painted windows ; and a very 
beautiful fashion it is, and extremely worthy of encourage- 
ment in this climate, where the general absence of colours 
renders it desirable that they should be collected wherever 
they can, so as to increase a feeling of cheerfulness and 
warmth. When the sun strikes through a painted window, 

* Another opinion, however, is that the spear had been given to 
one of his ancestors as having been a magistrate of some description. 
This supposition seems to be supported by the grant of arms to John 
Shakspeare in 1599, which has been printed by Mr. Malcolm. But 
Shakspeares in Warwickshire are as plentiful as blackberries, and 
perhaps the name originated in the stout arms of a whole tribe of 
goldiers. 

F3 



6£ COATS OP ARMS. 

it seems as if Heaven itself were recommending to us the 
brilliance with which it has painted its flowers and its skies. 
It is a pity we have no devices invented for themselves by 
the great men of past times, otherwise what an illustrious 
window would they make ! We should like to have pre- 
sented the reader with such of the escutcheons above men- 
tioned as have been created or modified in some respect by 
their ennoblers ; and to have shown him how different the old 
parts now appear, with which the individuals had nothing to 
do, compared with those of their own achievement, or adop- 
tion, even when nothing better than a motto. Sir Philip's 
motto almost rejects his coat.* If all persons, ambitious of 
good conduct and opinions, were to adopt our suggestion, and 
assume a device of their own, windows of this kind might 
abound among friends ; and many of them would become as 
interesting to posterity, as such "coats of arms" would, above 
all others, deserve to be. 

The most eminent names in the Heralds' College are 
Camden, the great antiquary ; Dugdale (whose merits, how- 
ever, are questionable) ; King, a writer on political arith- 
metic ; and Vanbrugh, the comic writer, who wore a tabard 
for a short time, as Clarencieux. Gibbon had an ancestor, a 
herald, who took great interest in the profession. He had 
another progenitor, who, about the reign of James the First, 
changed the scallop shells of the historian's coat " into three 
ogresses or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatising 
three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an 
unjust lawsuit." f A good account of heraldry, its anti- 
quities and its freaks, is a desideratum, and would make a 
very amusing book. 

We move westward from St. Paul's, because, though the 
metropolis abounds with interest in every part of it, yet the 
course this way is the most generally known; and readers 
may choose to hear of the most popular thoroughfares first. 

* Vix ea nostra voco — (as above translated). The effect is stronger 
if the whole passage is called to mind. It is Ovid; 

Nam genus, et proavos, et quas non fecinms ipsi, 
Vix ea nostra voco. — Metamor. lib. 13. v. 140. 
Tor birth, and rank, and what our own good powers 
Have earned us not, I scarcely call them ours. 
Ovid, himself a man of birth, puts this sentiment in the mouth of 
Ulysses, a king. But then he was a king whose talents were above 
His royalty. 
f Life of Gibbon, in the Autobiography, vol. i. 



LUDGATE. 



69 



The origin of the word Ludgate is not known. The old 
opinion respecting King Lud has been rejected, and Borne 
think it is the same as word as Flud or Fludgate, meaning 
the Gate on the Fleet, Floet, or Flood, F being dropt, as in 
leer for Fleer, Lloyd for Floyd or Fluyd, &c. It may be so ; 
but it is not easy to see, in that case, why Fleet Street should 
not have been called Lud Street. Perhaps the old tradition 
is right, and some ancient Lud, or Lloyd, was the builder of 
an "old original" gate, whether king or not. Its successor 
(which formerly crossed the street by St. Martin's church), 
was no older than the reign of King John. It was rebuilt in 
1586, and finally removed in 1760. Pennant says, he re- 
membered it "a wretched prison for debtors." The old 
chroniclers tell us a romantic story of a lord-mayor, Sir 




Stephen Forster, who enlarged this prison, and added a chapel 
to it. He had been confined in it himself, and, begging at 
the grate, was asked by a rich widow what sum would pur- 
chase his liberty. He said, twenty pounds. She paid it, took 
him into her service, and afterwards became his wife. One 
of our old dramatists (Rowley), in laying a scene in this 
prison, has made use of the name of Stephen Forster in a 



70 STORY OF STEPHEN FORSTER, 

different manner ; and probably his story bad a foundation in 
truth. According to him, Stephen, who had been a profligate 
fellow, was relieved by the son of his brother, with whom he 
was at variance. Stephen afterwards becomes rich in his 
turn, and seeing his brother become poor and thrust into the 
same prison, forbids his nephew Eobert, whom he had adopted 
on that condition, to relieve his father. The nephew disobeys, 
and has the misfortune to incur the hatred of both uncle and 
parent, for his connection with either party, but ultimately 
finds his virtue acknowledged. The following scene is one of 
those in which these old writers, in their honest confidence 
in nature, go direct to the heart. The reader will see the 
style of begging in those days. Robert Forster, who has been 
cursed by his father, comes to Ludgate, and stands concealed 
outside the prison, while his father appears above at the grate, 
" a box hanging down." 

Forster. Bread, bread, one penny to buy a loaf of bread, for the 
tender mercy. 

Rob. O me ! my shame! I know that voice full well; 
I '11 help thy wants, although thou curse me still. 

[He stands where he is unseen by his father. 

Fors. Bread, bread, some Christian man send back 
Your charity to a number of poor prisoners. 

One penny for the tender mercy — [Robert puts in money. 

The hand of Heaven reward you, gentle sir ! 
Never may you want, never feel misery; 
Let blessings in unnumbered measure grow, 
And fall upon your head, where'er you go. 

Rob. Oh, happy comfort! curses to the ground 
First struck me; now with blessings I am crowned. 

Fors. Bread, bread, for the tender mercy; one penny for a loaf of 
bread. 

Rob. I'll buy more blessings: take thou all my store: 
I '11 keep no coin and see my father poor. 

Fors. Good angels guard you, sir; my prayers shall be, 
That Heaven may bless you for this charity. 

Rob. If he knew me sure he would not say so: 
5Tet I have comfort, if by any means 
I get a blessing from my father's hands.* 

The prison of Ludgate was anciently considered to be not 
so much a place of confinement as a place of refuge, into 
which debtors threw themselves to escape from their creditors 
— " a keep, not so much of the wicked as of the wretched" — 
(" non sceleratorum career, sed miserorum custodia"), as it is 
expressed in a Latin speech which was addressed by the 
inmates to King Philip of Spain, when he passed through 
* Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, p. 147. 



LUDGATE PRISON. — WYATT's REBELLION. 71 

the city, in 1554, and which the celebrated Eoger Ascham 
was employed to compose. As it does not appear, however, 
that the persons who took up their abode here were allowed 
to come out again until they had discharged their debts, the 
distinction attempted to be drawn seems to be a somewhat 
shadowy one. A writer, nevertheless, quoted by Maitland, 
who in 1659 published a description of the house in which 
he had himself been for a long time a resident, expresses 
great indignation against the authorities for having " basely 
and injuriously caused to be taken down" the old inscription, 
affixed by Sir Stephen Forster, of Free Water and Lodging, 
" and set up another over the outward street door with only 
these words engraven: This is the Prison of Ludgate."* 
The prison of Ludgate stood on the south side of the street, 
and extended back till it almost joined a portion of the old 
London Wall, which ran nearly parallel to Ludgate Hill. 
About the year 1764 this wall is described as being eight 
feet and a half thick, f Bits of it (as before noticed) still 
remain in this neighbourhood. 

At this gate a stop was put to the insurrection of Sir 
Thomas Wyatt against Queen Mary, at the time when her 
marriage with Philip was in contemplation. Sir Thomas was 
son of the poet who had been a friend of the Earl of Surrey, 
and a warm partisan of Anne Bullen. He led his forces up 
the Strand and Fleet Street in no very hopeful condition, after 
suffering a loss in his rear; and on arriving at Ludgate, found 
it shut against him, and strongly manned. The disappoint- 
ment is said to have affected him so strongly, that he threw 
himself on a bench opposite the Bell-Savage Inn, and mourned 
the rashness of his hopes. He retired, only to find his retreat 
cut off at Temple Bar ; and being summoned by a herald to 
submit, requested it might be to a gentleman ; upon which 
his sword was received by a person of his own rank. He 
was beheaded. It is worth observing, that Mary, alarmed at 
this insurrection, had pretended, in a speech at Guildhall, that 
she would give up the marriage, provided it were seriously 
and properly objected to: she only called upon the citizens to 
stand by her against rebels. When the rebels, however, were 
put down, the marriage, though notoriously unpopular, was 
concluded. 

The Bell-Savage is an inn of old standing. The name is 

* Maitland, vol. i., p. 28. 

f Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum,*iv., p. 367. 



72 THE BELLE-SAUVAGE INN. 

now learnedly written over the front — Belle Sauvage. The 
old sign was a bell with a savage by it. Stow derived the 
name from Isabella Savage, who had given the house to the 
company of Cutlers ; and most likely this was its origin ; but 
as the inn was formerly one of those in which plays were 
acted, and as the players had dealings with romance, and 
sign painters varied their hieroglyphics according to the 
whim of the moment, Pennant might have reasonably found 
one derivation in the Spectator, without objecting to the other. 
A sight of the passage to which he refers will leave the imme- 
diate derivation beyond all doubt. " As for the Bell-Savage," 
says Addison (for the paper is his), " which is the sign of a 
Savage Man standing by a Bell, I was formerly very much 
puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the 
reading of an old romance translated out of the French ; 
which gives an account of a very beautiful woman who was 
in a wilderness, and is called in the French la belle Sauvage; 
and is everywhere translated by our countrymen the Bell- 
Savage." * This was one of the inns at which the famous 
Tarlton used to perform. London has a modern look to the 
inhabitants ; but persons who come from the country find as 
odd and remote-looking things in it as the Londoners do in 
York or Chester ; and among these are a variety of old inns, 
with corridors running round the yard. They are well 
worth a glance from anybody who has a respect for old 
times. The play used to be got up in the yard, and the 
richer part of the spectators occupied " the galleries."! 

* Spectator, vol. 1, No. 28. 

f Malone, in his Historical Account of the English Stage, has an 
ingenious parallel between these inn-theatres and the construction 
of the modern ones. "Many of our ancient dramatick pieces," he 
observes, " were performed in the yards of carriers' inns, in which, in 
the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the comedians, who then 
first united themselves in companies, erected an occasional stage. 
The form of these temporary play-houses seems to be preserved in our 
modern theatre. The galleries in both are ranged over each other on 
three sides of the building. The small rooms under the lowest of 
these galleries answer to our present boxes; and it is observable, that 
these, even in theatres which were built in a subsequent period 
expressly for dramatick exhibitions, still retained their old name, and 
were frequently called rooms by our ancient writers. The yard bears 
a sufficient resemblance to the pit, as at present in use. We may 
suppose the stage to have been raised in this arena, on the fourth side, 
with its back to the gateway of the inn, at which the money for 
admission was taken. Thus in fine weather, a play-house, not incom- 
modious, might have been formed." Heed's Edition of Johnson's and 
Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. iii., p. 73. 



ludGate hill. 73 

The wall in which Lud-gate stood was the occasion of the 
hill's having two names, which is still the case, the upper part, 
between the Bell-Savage and St. Paul's Churchyard, being 
called Ludgate Street, and only the rest Ludgate Hill. This 
latter portion went anciently by the name of Bowyers' Row, 
no doubt from its being principally inhabited by persons of 
that trade. On Ludgate Hill lived the cobbler whom Steele 
mentions as a curious instance of pride.* He had a wooden 
figure of a beau, who stood before him in a bending posture, 
humbly presenting him with his awl, or bristle, or whatever 
else his employer chose to put in his hand, after the manner 
of an obsequious servant. Steele seems to have thought the 
man mad ; otherwise the conceit would have been an agreeable 
one. Ludgate Street, as if to keep up and augment the " 
didactic reputation of the neighbourhood, was not long since 
the head-quarters of the Society for the Diffusion of Know- 
ledge, at least as far as regarded their publications. And, 
curiously enough, the house was next door to old " New- 
berry's." 

Between Ludgate Hill and the Thames, in the district more 
properly retaining the name, was the monastery of the Black 
Friars, an order of Dominicans, in which parliaments were 
sometimes held. The Emperor Charles V. was lodged in it 
when he visited Henry VIII. , in 1522 ; and in a hall of the 
same building, seven years after, the cause was tried between 
Henry and his queen, Catherine. Shakspeare has given us 
the opening scene. In Elizabeth's time, the desecrated tene- 
ments and neighbourhood of Blackfriars became the resort of 
the world of fashion — a court end of the city ; and close at 
hand, on the site retaining the name of Play-house Yard, was 
the famous Theatre in Blackfriars, where Shakspeare's, Ben 
Jonson's, and Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were performed, 
and where many of them came out. It was what they called at 
that time a " private" theatre, the peculiarity of which is not 
exactly understood. All that is known of it is, that it was 
smaller than the public ones ; but it was open to public admis- 
sion. Perhaps a private theatre meant a theatre more select 
than the others, and frequented by politer company ; for such, 
at any rate, the present one appears to have been. It is con- 
jectured also to have been a winter theatre, and its perform- 
ances took place by candlelight. The gallants and ladies of 
the courts of Elizabeth and James took their dinner at noon, 
"*Tatler, No. 127. 



74 ACCIDENT AT BLACKFRIARS IN 1623. 

and after riding or lute-playing till evening, went to their 
snug little theatre in the neighbourhood, to laugh or weep 
over the divine fancies of Shakspeare. Shakspeare himself 
must often have been on the spot ; a certainty which an in- 
tellectual inhabtiant will be glad to possess. The theatre, at 
one time, was partly his property. 

A part of the monastery of the Blackfriars was, in 1623, 
the scene of a frightful accident, which made a great noise at 
the time. Mr. Malcolm has enumerated several of the publi- 
cations recording it ; and from these it appears that on Sunday, 
the 5th of November in that year, a congregation of about 
three hundred individuals had assembled in a small gallery 
over the gateway of the lodgings of the French Ambassador 
in this building, in order to hear a sermon from a Jesuit, 
named Father Drury, who enjoyed considerable reputation as 
a preacher. Under the floor of the chamber where they were 
assembled was an empty apartment, and under that another, 
making together a height of twenty-two feet from the ground ; 
and the floor itself, as it afterwards turned out, was mainly 
supported by a single beam, which in the centre was not more 
than three inches thick. The people had been in their seats 
for about half-an-hour, when this beam suddenly gave way, 
and the whole of them were instantly precipitated, mixed 
with the timber, plaster, and rubbish of the floors, into the 
vacant depth below. Drury, and another priest, named Red- 
gate, were both killed, as were also a Lady Webbe, and the 
daughter of a Lady Blackstone, together with, it is supposed, 
between ninety and a hundred persons. Many more were 
seriously injured. " Several people," says Mr. Malcolm, 
" escaped in a very extraordinary manner, particularly Mrs. 
Lucy Penruddock, who was pieserved by a chair falling 
hollow over her ; and a young man, who lay on the floor, 
overwhelmed by people and rubbish, yet untouched by them, 
through the resting of fragments on each other, and thus 
leaving a space round him. In this horrible situation he had 
the presence of mind to force his way through a piece of the 
ceiling, and he shortly after had the indescribable happiness 
of assisting in the liberation of others."* There were many 
persons, it would appear, foolish and wicked enough to repre- 
sent this calamity as a token of the displeasure of heaven 
against the Roman Catholic faith. The pamphlets noticed 
by Mr. Malcolm are some of those that were published by 
* Londinium Redirivum, ii., 375, 



PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE. 75 

the parties in a violent controversy which raged for some 
time on the subject. The , day on which this accident hap- 
pened was long remembered under the name of the Fatal 
Vespers ; and the circumstance that it was the anniversary 
of the Gunpowder Plot was not forgotten by the judgment- 
mongers. Most of the bodies of those who were killed on this 
occasion were buried without either the ceremony of a funeral 
service, or the decency of a coffin or winding-sheet, in two 
large pits or trenches, dug, the one in the court before, and 
the other in the garden behind the house, in which the acci- 
dent had taken place. 

Printing-house Square, close to Playhouse-yard, marks out 
the site of the ancient King's Printing-House, whence bibles, 
prayer-books, and proclamations were issued. It was rebuilt 
in the middle of the last century, and became, according to 
Maitland, " the completest printing-house in the world." The 
king's printer now lives elsewhere ; but in the same spot is a 
house, which may be called the world's printing-house, seeing 
the enormous multitude of newspapers which the mighty 
giant of steam daily throws forth out of his iron lap, full of 
interest to all quarters of the globe. We need not say that 
we allude to the Times newspaper. There is knowing, in this 
and other instances, what bounds to put to human expecta- 
tion, when mechanical and intellectual force are thus joined 
in a common object. 

On the other side of the way, in Bridge Street, stood, and 
stands now, though hidden by the new houses, and much 
altered, the former palace of Bridewell, now known as a house 
of industry and correction. In ancient times the King used 
frequently to reside here ; and when such was the case, the 
courts of law sometimes attended him. The building, having 
fallen into decay, was restored about the year 1522, by 
Henry VIII. ; and here the attendants of the Emperor 
Charles V. were lodged while the emperor himself occupied 
the Blackfriars, a communication being formed between the 
two palaces by a gallery carried over the Fleet Ditch, and 
through the old city wall. Both Henry and Catherine, also, 
were lodged here, while the cause between them was proceed- 
ing at Blackfriars. In 1553 Edward VI. granted the palace, 
on the solicitation of Bishop Ridley, for the purposes to which 
it has been since applied ; an act of benevolence which was 
recorded, with more precision than elegance, in the following 



76 BRIDEWELL— CASTLE BATNARD. 

lines under a portrait of his majesty, that used to hang near 
the pulpit in the old chapel : — 

" This Edward of fair memory the sixth. 
In whom with greatness, goodness was commixt, 
Gave this Bridewell, a Palace in old times, 
For a chastising house of vagrant crimes." 

Bridewell having been burnt down in the Great Fire was 
rebuilt immediately after that calamity, and it has since been 
frequently repaired, and partially renovated. Henry the 
Eighth (" sturdy rogue !") would have been a fit personage 
to lodge in it still, though under somewhat different circum- 
stances. 

One of the steep and gloomy descents from Thames Street 
still preserves the name of Castle Street ; and immediately to 
the west of this stood in ancient times, on the banks of the 
river, a large building called Baynard's Castle. Baynard, by 
whom it was originally erected in the eleventh century, was 
one of the Conqueror's Norman followers. His descendant, 
William Baynard, however, soon after the commencement of 
the next century, forfeited his inheritance to the crown, by 
which it was bestowed upon the family of Clare. The repre- 
sentative of this family, and the possessor of Baynard's Castle, 
in the reign of King John, was the Baron Robert Fitzwalter, 
a portion of whose history, as related by some of our old 
chioniclers, gives an interest to the spot. Among the beauties 
of the time, one of the fairest was Matilda, the daughter of 
Fitzwalter. The licentious monarch, who may have seen her 
at some high festival held in this very castle, was smitten, 
after his fashion, by her charms ; but his suit was rejected with 
indignation, both by herself and her father. His "love" now 
turned into hatred and thirst of revenge ; he soon after 
resorted to open force, and having first driven Fitzwalter to 
seek refuge in France, easily got the unhappy girl into his 
custody, and, if we are to believe the story, despatched her by 
poison. He at the same time ordered Castle Baynard to be 
demolished. The next year the armies of the English and 
French Kings lay encamped during a truce on the opposite 
sides of a river in France, when an English knight, impatient, 
as it would seem, of the bloodless inactivity that prevailed, 
thought fit to challenge any one of the enemy who chose to 
come forth and break a lance with him. It was not long 
before a champion appeared making his way across the water, 
■ 



STORY OF THE BARON FITZWALTER. ^r 77 

who, unattended as he was, had no sooner reached the land, 
than he mounted a horse and rode up to meet his challenger. 
The duel took place in the sight of King John and his troops, 
but it did not last long ; for both the English knight and his 
horse were thrown to the ground by the first thrust of his 
antagonist's spear, which was also broken to shivers in the 
shock. " By God's troth," exclaimed John, as he beheld this 
heroic exploit, " he were a king indeed who had such a knight." 
The words were caught by some of the bystanders, who had 
observed more narrowly than the monarch the figure of the 
unknown victor, and who suspected him to be no other than 
their old acquaintance, the Baron Fitzwalter. It was, in fact, 
no other. The next day, the praise which the King had 
bestowed upon his prowess being reported to him, he returned 
to the English camp, and throwing himself at the feet of his 
sovereign, was re- admitted to favour, and restored to all his 
former possessions and honours. We may observe, however, 
that this narrative is scarcely detailed with sufficient precision 
to entitle it to be received as a piece of authentic history, and 
that especially it does not seem to be very easy to reconcile 
some parts of it, as commonly given, with the ascertained 
dates and course of the events of King John's reign. This 
Robert Fitzwalter is placed by Matthew Paris at the head of 
his list of the Barons, who, in 1215, came armed in a body to 
the King, at the Temple, and made those demands which led 
to the concession of the Great Charter at Bunnymede. Indeed, 
in the short military contest which preceded the King's sub- 
mission, Fitzwalter was appointed by his brother barons the 
commander-in-chief of their forces, and dignified in that 
capacity with the title of Marshal of the Army of God and of 
Holy Church. On his return to England, he is said to have 
rebuilt or repaired his castle in London which the King had 
thrown down, and the edifice continued for a long time to be 
the principal fortress within the city. The family of Fitz- 
walter, in consequence of their possession of Baynard's Castle, 
held the office of Chastilians and Bannerets, or Banner-bearers 
of London ; and the reader who is curious upon such matters 
may consult Stow, or those who have copied him, for an 
account of the rights, services, and ceremonial customs apper- 
taining to that dignity. The punishment of a person found 
guilty of treason within the banneret's jurisdiction is worth 
noticing : he was to be tied to a post in the Thames, at one of 
the wharfs, and left there for two ebbings and two flowings of 



78 



RICHARD HI. AND BUCKINGHAM. 



the tide. After this, there was certainly little chance of his 
committing more treason. 

It is not known how Baynard's Castle, and the privileges 
belonging to the lordship, got out of the hands of this family ; 
but in 1428, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, the building, 
having been burned down, is stated to have been restored by 
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. After the duke's death it 
came once more into the possession of the crown ; and here it 
was that the great council assembled in the beginning of 
March, ]461, which proclaimed the Earl of March King, by 
the title of Edward IV. It was here also, twenty-two years 
after, that the solemn farce was enacted in which Eichard III. 
assumed the royal dignity on the invitation of Buckingham, 
and in obedience to the pretended wishes of the citizens. 



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Shakspeare has given this scene with an exact conformity, in 
all the matters of fact, to the narratives of the old chroniclers ; 
the crafty Protector, it will be remembered, being made to 
present himself in the gallery above, supported by a bishop 
on each side, while Buckingham, the lord mayor, the alder- 
men, and the citizens, occupy the court of the castle below. 
Baynard's Castle was once more rebuilt in 1487, by Henry VII., 
with a view to its answering better the purpose of a royal 
palace ; and the King occasionally lodged there. Some time 
after this we find the place in possession of the Earls of 
Pembroke, who made it their common residence ; and it was 
here that the Earl of that name, on the 19th of July, 1553, 
about a fortnight after the death of Edward VI., assembled 



diana's chamber. 79 

the council of the nobility and clergy, at which the determin- 
ation was taken, on the motion of Lord Arundel, to abandon 
the cause of Lady Jane Grey, and to proclaim Queen Mary, 
which, accordingly, was instantly done ia different parts of 
the city. This is supposed to have been the building which 
was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. It is represented 
in an old print of London as a square pile' surrounding a 
court, and surmounted with numerous towers. A large gate- 
way in the middle of the south side led to the river by a 
bridge of two arches and stairs. This ancient fortress was 
never rebuilt after the fire ; and its site has been since 
occupied by wharfs, timber-yards, workshops, and common 
dwelling-houses. The ward, however, in which it was situated, 
and which embraces also St. Paul's Churchyard, and nearly 
all the localities we have as yet noticed, still retains the name 
of the Ward of Baynard's Castle. 

Upon Paul's Wharf Hill, to the north-east of Baynard's 
Castle, were a number of houses within a great gate, which 
are said by Maitland to have been designated, in the leases 
granted by the dean and chapter, as the Camera Diana, or 
Diana's Chamber, and to have been so denominated from a 
spacious building in the form of a labyrinth, constructed here 
by Henry II. for the concealment of the fair Eosamond 
Clifford. We need scarcely say that this tradition has all the 
air of a fable. The author we have just named, however, 
assures us that " for a long time there remained some evident 
testifications of tedious turnings and windings, as also of a 
passage under ground from his house to Castle Baynard ; 
which was no doubt the King's way from thence to the 
Camera Diana" * or the chamber of his " brightest Diana." 
What the testifications may in question really have amounted to, 
we cannot pretend to say ; but Diana, not being a family name, 
as in the case of another royal favourite, Diana of Poitiers, 
seems a strange one to have been given to the lady already 
christened by so poetical an appellation as Eosamond, and so 
diffeient in her reputation from the chaste goddess. We 
should, for our parts, rather suppose that the dean and chapter 
had been moved to call the place Diana's chamber by some 
tradition, or a conceit of their own, connecting it with the 
temple of that goddess, said to have formerly stood on the site 
of the neighbouring cathedral ; or if the name was really a 
very ancient one, and in popular use, it may perhaps be taken 
* History of London, ii., 880. 



80 ___. THE ROYAL WARDROBE. 

as lending some slight confirmation to the notion of the actual 
existence of that heathen edifice, and may " help," as Iago 
phrases it, "to thicken other proofs that also demonstrate 
thinly." Diana's Chamber, however, may have been so called 
from its being hung with painted tapestry, representing some 
story of the goddess. Inigo Jones, by the way, is said by 
Lord Orford to be buried in the church of St. Bennet, Paul's 
Wharf, which stands immediately to the south of the spot 
where we now are, at the corner formed by the meeting of 
Thames Street and St. Bennet's Hill. 

Another building which formerly existed in this neighbour- 
hood was the Eoyal Wardrobe. It occupied the site of the 
present Wardrobe Court, immediately to the north of the 
church of St. Andrew's and gave to the parish the name of 
St. Andrew's Wardrobe, by which it is still known. This 
building was erected about the middle of the fourteenth 
century, by Sir John Beau champ, Knight of the Garter, a 
son of Guido, Earl of Warwick, by whose heirs it was sold to 
Edward III. Mr. Malcolm has printed some extracts from 
the Manuscript Account Book, since preserved in the Har- 
leian collection, of a keeper of this Wardrobe, from the 
middle of April to Michaelmas 1481, (towards the close of 
the reign of Edward IV.), which are interesting and valuable 
as memorials, both of the prices and of the fashions of that 
time. During the period, of less than six months, over which 
the accounts extend, the sum of 1,174/. 5s. 2c?. appears to 
have been received by the keeper, for the use of his office. Of 
this the most considerable portion seems to have been expended 
in the purchase of velvet and silks from Montpellier. The 
velvets cost from 8s. to 16s. per yard; black cloths of gold, 
40s. ; what is called velvet upon velvet, the same ; damask, 
8s. ; satins, 6s. 10s. and 12s., camlets, 30s. a-piece ; and 
sarcenets for 4s. to 4s. 2c?. Feather beds, with bolsters, " for 
our sovereign lord the King," are charged 16s 8c?. each. A 
pair of shoes, of Spanish leather, double soled, and not lined, 
cost Is. 4c?. ; a pair of black leather boots, 6s. 8c?. ; hats Is. 
a-piece; and ostrich feathers, each 10s. The keeper's salary 
appears to have been 100?. per annum — that of his clerk Is. 
a-day; and the wages of the tailors 6d. a-day each. The 
King sometimes lodged at the Wardrobe ; on one of which 
occasions the washings of the sheets which had been used is 
charged at the rate of 3c?. a pair. Candles cost lc?. a pound. 
All the money disbursed by the keeper of the wardrobe, how- 



MARRIAGES IN THE FLEET. 81 

fever, was Hot expended in decorating the persons of his 
Majesty and the royal household. Among other items we find 
20s. paid to Piers Bauduyn (or Peter Baldwin, as we should 
now call him), stationer, " for binding, gilding, and dressing 
of a book called Titus Livius ; " for performing the same offices 
to a Bible, a Froisard, a Holy Trinity, and the Government 
of Kings and Princes, 16s. each; for three small French books, 
6s. 8d. ; for the Fortress of Faith, and Josephus 3s. Ad. ; and 
for what is designated " the Bible Historical," 20s. So that 
in those days, we see the binding a book was conceived to be a 
putting of it into breeches, and the artist employed for that 
purpose looked upon as a sort of literary tailor. 

How impossible it would now be in a neighbourhood like 
this, for such nuisances to exist, as a fetid public ditch, and 
scouts of degraded clergymen asking people to " walk in and 
be married ! " Yet such was the case a century ago. At the 
bottom of Ludgate Hill the little river Fleet formerly ran, and 
was rendered navigable. Adjoining the site of Fleet Market is 
Sea-coal Lane, so called from the barges that landed coal there ; 
and Turnagain Lane, at the bottom of which the unadvised pas- 
senger found himself compelled by the water to retrace his steps. 
The water gradually got clogged and foul; and the channel 
was built over and made a street, as we have noticed in our 
introduction. But even in the time we speak of, this had not 
been entirely done. The ditch was open from Fleet Market 
to the river, occupying the site of the modern Bridge Street ; 
and in the market, before the door of the Fleet prison, 
men plied in behalf of a clergyman, literally inviting people to 
walk in and be married They performed the ceremony inside 
the prison, to sailors and others, for what they could get. It 
was the most squalid of Gretnas, bearding the decency and 
common-sense of a whole metropolis. The parties retired to a 
gin shop to treat the clergyman; and there, and in similar 
nouses, the register was kept of the marriages. Not far from 
where the Fleet stood is Newgate; so that the victims had 
their succession of nooses prepared, in case, as no doubt it 
often happened, one tie should be followed by the other. 
Pennant speaks of this nuisance from personal knowledge. 

" In walking along the streets in my youth," he tells us, " on the 
side next this prison, I have often been tempted by the question, ' Sir, 
will you be pleased to walk in and be married? Along this most lawless 
space was frequently hung up the sign of a male and female hand con- 
joined, with Marriages performed within, written beneath. A dirty 
fellow invited you in. The parson was seen walking before his shop ; a 

Q 



82 THE DUNCIAD. 

squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid night-gown, with a 
fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin or roll of 
tobacco. Our great chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, put these demons to 
flight, and saved thousands from the misery and disgrace which would 
be entailed by these extemporary thoughtless unions." 

This extraordinary disgrace to the city, which arose most 
likely from the permission to marry prisoners, and one great 
secret of which was the advantage taken of it by wretched 
women to get rid of their debts, was maintained by a collusion 
between the warden of the Fleet and the disreputable clergy- 
men he became acquainted with. " To such an extent," says 
Malcolm, "were the proceedings carried, that twenty and 
thirty couple were joined in one day, at from ten to twenty 
shillings each ; " and " between the 19th Oct., 1704, and the 
12th Feb., 1705, 2,954 marriages were celebrated (by evi- 
dence), besides others known to have been omitted. To these 
neither licence nor certificate of banns were required, and 
they concealed, by private marks, the names of those who 
chose to pay them for it." The neighbourhood at length 
complained ; and the abuse was put an end to by the Marriage 
Act, to which it gave rise. 

Ludgate and Fleet ditch figure among the scenes of the 
Dunciad. It is near Bridewell, on the site of the modern 
Bridge Street, that the venal and scurrilous heroes of that 
poem emulate one another, at the call of Dulness, in seeing 
who can plunge deepest into the mud and dirt. 

" This labour past, by Bridewell all descend, 
(As morning prayer and flagellation end *), 
To where Fleet ditch, with disemboguing streams, 
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames ; 
The king of dykes ! than whom no sluice of mud 
With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 
Here strip, my children ! here at once leap in ; 
Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin ; 
And who the most in love of dirt excel, 
And dark dexterity of groping well." f 

This part of the games being over, 

" Through Lud's famed gates, along the well-known Fleet, 
Rolls the black troop and overshades the street ; 
Till showers of sermons, characters, essays, 
In circling fences whiten all the ways : 
So clouds replenished from some bog below, 
Mount in dark volumes and descend in snow." 

* The whipping of the criminals in Bridewell took place after the 
church service. 

f Dunciad, book ii., v. 269. 



BOOKSELLERS SHOPS. 



83 



The "well-known Fleet" is the prison just mentioned, the 
side of which appears to have been visible at that time in 
Ludgate Hill, and where it was a joke (too often founded in 
truth) to suppose authors incarcerated. 

" Pew sons of Phoebus in the courts we meet ; 
But fifty sons of Phoebus in the Fleet," 

says a prologue of Sheridan's. The Fleet having " rules," 
like the King's Bench, authors were found in the neighbour- 
hood also. Arthur Murphy, provoked by the attacks of 
Churchill and Lloyd, describes them as among the poor 
hacks, 

" On Ludgate Hill who bloody murders write, 
Or pass in Fleet Street supperless the night." 

Booksellers' shops were then common as now in Fleet Street 
and the Strand, in Paternoster Row, and St. Paul's Church- 
yard. This is pleasant to think of; for change is not desirable 
without improvement. One feels gratified, where difference 
is not demanded of us, in being able to have the same associa- 
tion of ideas with such men as Pope and Dryden, even if it 
be upon no higher ground than the quantity of books in 
Paternoster Row, or the circumstance that Ludgate Hill still 
leads into Fleet Street. 




THE STONE IN PANTER ALLEY. 



02 



84 

CHAPTER III. 

FLEET STREET. 

Burning of the Pope— St. Bride's Steeple— Milton— Illuminated Clock 
— Melancholy End of Lovelace the Cavalier — Chatterton — Gene- 
rosity of Hardham, of Snuff Celebrity — Theatre in Dorset Garden 
— Richardson, his Habits and Character — Whitefriars, or Alsatia 
— The Temple — Its Monuments, Garden, &c. — Eminent names con- 
nected with it — Goldsmith dies there — Boswell's first Visit there to 
Johnson — Johnson and Madame de Boufflers — Bernard Lintot — 
Ben Jonson's Devil Tavern — Other Coffee-houses and Shops — 
Goldsmith and Temple-bar — Shire Lane, Bickerstaff, and the 
Deputation from the Country — The Kit-Kat Club — Mrs. Salmon — 
Isaac Walton— Cowley — Chancery Lane, Lord Strafford, and Ben 
Jonson — Serjeant's Inn — Clifford's Inn — The Rolls — Sir Joseph 
Jekyll — Church of St. Dunstan in the West — Dryden's House in 
Eetter Lane — Johnson, the Genius Loci of Eleet Street — His Way 
of Life — His Residence in Gough Square, Johnson's Court, and 
Bolt Court — Various Anecdotes of him connected with Eleet Street, 
and with his favourite Tavern, the Mitre. 

E are now in Fleet Street, and pleasant 
memories thicken upon us. To the left 
is the renowned realm of Alsatia, the 
Temple, the Mitre, and the abode of 
Richardson ; to the right divers abodes 
of Johnson ; Chancery Lane, with 
Cowley's birth-place at the corner ; 
Fetter Lane, where Dryden once lived ; 
and Shire or Sheer Lane, immortal for the Tatler. 

Fleet Street was, for a good period, perhaps for a longer 
one than can now be ascertained, the great place for shows 
and spectacles. Wild beasts, monsters, and other marvels, 
used to be exhibited there, as the wax- work was lately ; and 
here took place the famous ceremony of burning the Pope, 
with its long procession, and bigoted anti-bigotries. How- 
over, the lesser bigotry was useful, at that time, in keeping 
out the greater. Roger North has left us a lively account of 
one of these processions, in his Examen. It took place towards 
the close of the reign of Charles the Second, when just fears 
were entertained of his successor's design to bring in Popery. 
The day of the ceremony was the birth-day of Queen Eliza- 
beth, the 17th March. 

"When we had posted ourselves," says North, "at windows 
expecting the play to begin " (he had taken his stand in the Green 




BURNING OF THE POPE. 85 

Dragon Tavern), " it was very dark ; but we could perceive the 
street to fill, and the hum of the crowd grew louder and louder ; and 
at length, with help of some lights below, we could discern, not only up- 
wards towards the bar, where the squib-war was maintained, but down- 
wards towards Eleet Bridge ; the whole street was crowded with people, 
which made that which followed seem very strange ; for about eight 
at night we heard a din from below, which came up the street, con- 
tinually increasing till we could perceive a motion ; and that was a 
row of stout fellows, that came, shouldered together, cross the street, 
from wall Jo wall on each side. How the people melted away, I can- 
not tell ; but it was plain those fellows made clear board, as if they 
had swept the street for what was to come after. They went along 
like a wave; and it was wonderful to see how the crowd, made way : 
I suppose the good people were willing to give obedience to lawful 
authority. Behind this wave (which, as all the rest, had many lights 
attending), there was a vacancy, but it filled apace, till another like 
wave came up ; and so four or five of these waves passed, one after 
another ; and then we discerned more numerous lights, and throats 
were opened with hoarse and tremendous noise ; and with that 
advanced a pageant, borne along above the heads of the crowd, and 
upon it sat an huge Pope, in pontificalibus, in his chair, with a season- 
able attendance for state : but his premier minister, that shared most 
of his ear, was II Signior Diavolo, a nimble little fellow, in a proper 
dress, that had a strange dexterity in climbing and winding about the 
chair, from one of the Pope's ears to the other. 

" The next pageant was a parcel of Jesuits ; and after that (for 
there was always a decent space between them) came another, with 
some ordinary persons with halters, as I took it, about their necks ; 
and one with a stenterophonic tube, sounded 'Abhorrers! Abhorrers!' 
most infernally ; and, lastly, came one, with a single person upon it, 
which some said was the phamphleteer, Sir Roger L'Estrange, some 
the King of Prance, some the Duke of York ; but, certainly, it was 
a very complaisant, civil gentleman, like the former, that was doing 
what everybody pleased to have him ; and, taking all in good part 
went on his way to the fire." 

The description concludes with a brief mention of burning 
the effigies, which, on these occasions, appear to have been of 
pasteboard.* 

One of the great flgurers in this ceremony was the doleful 
image of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a magistrate, supposed to 
have been killed by the Papists during the question of the plot. 
Dryden has a fine contemptuous couplet upon it, in one of his 
prologues ; — 

" Sir Edmondbury first in woful wise, 
Leads up the show, and milks their maudlin eyes?* 

"We will begin with the left side, as we are there already; 

* See Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. x., p. 372. "Abhorrers " 
were addressers on the side of the court, who had avowed " abhor- 
rence" of the proceedings of the Whigs. The word was a capital one 
to sound through a trumpet, 



86 ST. bride's steeple, 

and first let us express our thanks for the neat opening by 
/ which St. Bride's church has been rendered an ornament to 
this populous thoroughfare. The steeple is one of the most 
beautiful of Wren's productions, though diminished, in con- 
sequence of its having been found to be too severely tried by 
the wind. But a ray now comes out of this opening as we 
pass the street, better even than that of the illuminated clock 
at night time ; for there, in a lodging in the churchyard, lived 
Milton, at the time that he undertook the education of his 
sister's children. He was then young and unmarried. He is 
said to have rendered his young scholars, in the course of a 
year, able to read Latin at sight, though they were but nine 
or ten years of age. As to the clock, which serves to remind 
the jovial that they ought to be at home, we are loth to object 
to anything useful ; and in fact we admit its pretensions ; and 
yet as there is a time for all things, there would seem to be a 
time for time itself ; and we doubt whether those who do not 
care to ascertain the hour beforehand, will derive much benefit 
from this glaring piece of advice. 

"At the west end of St. Bride's Church," according to 
Wood, was buried Eichard Lovelace, Esq., one of the most 
elegant of the cavaliers of Charles the First, and author of the 
exquisite ballad beginning — 

" When Love with unconfined wings 
Hovers within my gates, 
And my divine Althea brings 
To whisper at my grates. 

" When I lie tangled in her hair, 
And fetter'd in her eye, 
The birds that wanton in the air, 
Know no such liberty. 
* # # * 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage, 
Minds innocent and quiet take 
That for an hermitage." 

This accomplished man, who is said by Wood to have been 
in his youth " the most amiable and beautiful person that eye 
ever beheld," and who was lamented by Charles Cotton as an 
epitome of manly virtue, died at a poor lodging in Gun- 
powder Alley, near Shoe Lane, an object of charity.* He 

* Aubrey says that his death took place in a cellar in Long Acre ; 
and adds, " Mr. Edm. Wylde, &c, had made a collection for him, and 



RICHARD LOVELACE. 87 

had been imprisoned by the Parliament and lived during his 
imprisonment beyond his income. Wood thinks that he did 
so in order to support the royal cause, and out of generosity 
to deserving men, and to his brothers. He then went into the 
service of the French King, returned to England after being 
wounded, and was again committed to prison, where he re- 
mained till the King's death, when he was set at liberty. 
" Having then," says his biographer, " consumed all his 
estate, he grew very melancholy (which brought him at 
length into a consumption), became very poor in body and 
purse, and was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes, 
(whereas, when he was in his glory, he wore cloth of gold and 
silver,) and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more 
befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants," &c* 
" Geo. Petty, haberdasher in Fleet Street," says Aubrey, 
" carried 20 shillings to him every Monday Morning from 

Sir Manny, and Charles Cotton, Esq., for months: 

but was never repaid." As if it was their intention he should 
be ! Poor Cotton, in the excess of his relish of life, lived 
himself to be in want ; perhaps wanted the ten shillings that 
he sent. The mistress of Lovelace is reported to have married 
another man, supposing him to have died of his wounds in 
France. Perhaps this helped to make him careless of his 
fortune : but it is probable that his habits were naturally 
showy and expensive. Aubrey says he was proud. He was 
accounted a sort of minor Sir Philip Sydney. We speak the 
more of him, not only on account of his poetry (which, for 
the most part, displays much fancy, injured by want of select- 
ness), but because his connection with the neighbourhood, 
probably suggested to Richardson the name of his hero in 
Clarissa. Grandison is another cavalier name in the history 
of those times. It was the title of the Duchess of Cleveland's 
father. Eichardson himself was buried in St. Bride's. He 
was laid, according to his wish, with his first wife, in the 
middle aisle, near the pulpit. Where he lived, we shall see 
presently. 

Not far from Gunpowder Alley, in the burying-ground of 
the workhouse in Shoe Lane, lies a greater and more unfortu- 
nate name than Lovelace — Chatterton. But we shall say more 

given him money." But Aubrey's authority is not valid against 
Wood's. He is to he read like a proper gossip, whose accounts we 
may pretty safely reject or believe, as it suits other testimony. 
f Wood's Athense Oxonienses, fol. vol. ii., p. 145. 



88 HARDHAM. 

of hirn when we come to Brook Street, Holborn. We have 
been perplexed to decide, whether to say all we have got to 
say upon anybody, when we come to the first place with 
which he is connected, or divide our memorials of him ac- 
cording to the several places. Circumstances will guide us ; 
but upon the whole it seems best to let the places themselves 
decide. If the spot is rendered particularly interesting by the 
division, we may act accordingly, as in the present instance. 
If not, all the anecdotes may be given at once. 

On the same side of the way as Shoe Lane, but nearer Fleet 
Market, was Hardham's, a celebrated snuff-shop, the founder 
of which deserves mention for a very delicate generosity. He 
was numberer at Drury Lane Theatre, that is to say, the 
person who counted the number of people in the house, from 
a hole over the top of the stage ; a practice now discontinued. 
Whether this employment led him to number snuffs, as well 
as men, we cannot say, but he was the first who gave them 
their distinctions that way. Lovers of 

" The pungent grains of titillating dust" 
are indebted to him for the famous compound entitled " 37." 
" Being passionately fond of theatrical entertainments, he was 
seldom," says his biographer, " without embryo Richards and 
Hotspurs strutting and bellowing in his dining-room, or in the 
parlour behind his shop. The latter of these apartments was 
adorned with heads of most of the persons celebrated for 
dramatic excellence ; and to these he frequently referred in 
the course of his instructions." 

"There is one circumstance, however, in his private character," 
. continues our authority, " which deserves a more honourable rescue 
from oblivion. His charity was extensive in an uncommon degree, 
and was conveyed to many of its objects in the most delicate manner. 
On account of his known integrity (for he once failed in business, 
more creditably than he could have made a fortume by it,) he was 
often entrusted with the care of paying little annual stipends to un- 
fortunate women, and others who were in equal want of relief ; and 
he has been known, with a generosity almost unexampled, to continue 
these annuities, long after the sources of them had been stopped by 
the deaths or caprices of the persons who at first supplied them. At 
the same time he persuaded the receivers that their money was 
remitted to them as usual, through its former channel. Indeed his 
purse was never shut even to those who were casually recommended 
by his common acquaintance."* 

This admirable man died in 1772; and by his will be- 

* Baker's Biographia Dramatica. Reed's edition, 178?, vol. i.. 
P, 207. 



RICHARDSON, 89 

queathed the interest of 20,000Z. to a female acquaintance, 
and at her decease the principal, &c, to the poor of his native 
city, Chichester. 

Returning over the way we come to Dorset Street and 
Salisbury Court, names originating in a palace of the Bishop 
of Salisbury, which he parted with to the Sackvilles. 
Clarendon lived in it a short time after the Restoration. At 
the bottom of Salisbury Court, facing the river, was the 
celebrated play-house, one of the earliest in which theatrical 
entertainments were resumed at that period. The first men- 
tion we find of it is in the following curious memorandum in 
the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the 
revels to King Charles I. " I committed Cromes, a broker in 
Longe Lane, the 16th of Febru., 1634, to the Marsalsey, for 
lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it to the 
players in Salisbury Court, to present a Flamen, a priest of 
the heathens. Upon his petition of submission, and acknow- 
ledgment of his fault, I released him, the 17 Febru., 1634."* 

It is not certain, however, whether the old theatre in Salis- 
bury Court, and that in Dorset Garden, were one and the 
same ; though they are conjectured to have been so. The 
names of both places seem to have been indiscriminately 
applied. Be this as it may, the house became famous under 
the Davenants for the introduction of operas and of a more 
splendid exhibition of scenery ; but in consequence of the 
growth of theatres in the more western parts of the town, it 
was occasionally quitted by the proprietors, and about the 
beginning of the last century abandoned. This theatre was 
the last to which people went in boats. 

In a house, "in the centre of Salisbury Square or Salis- 
bury Court, as it was then called," Richardson spent the 
greater part of his town life, and wrote his earliest work, 
Pamela. Probably a good part of all his works were com- 
posed there, as well as at Fulham, for the pen was never out 
of his hand. He removed from this house in 1755, after he 
had written all his works ; and taking eight old tenements in 
the same quarter, pulled them down, and built a large and 
commodious range of warehouses and printing offices. " The 
dwelling-house," says Mrs. Barbauld, " was neither so large 
nor so airy as the one he quitted, and therefore the reader 
will not be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson seems to 

* Malone in the Prolegomena to Shakspeare, as above, vol. iii., 
p. 287. 



y\) RICHARDSON, 

have been, in accusing His wife of perverseness in not liking 
the new habitation as well as the old."* This was the second 
Mrs. Richardson. He calls her in other places his " worthy- 
hearted wife ; " but complains that she used to get her way 
by seeming to submit, and then returning to the point, when 
his heat of objection was over. She was a formal woman. 
His own manners were strict and formal with regard to his 
family, probably because he had formed his notions of life 
from old books, and also because he did not well know how to 
begin to do otherwise (for he was naturally bashful), and so 
the habit continued through life. His daughters addressed 
him in their letters by the title of " Honoured Sir," and are 
always designating themselves as " ever dutiful." Sedentary 
living, eternal writing, and perhaps that indulgence in the 
table, w r hich, however moderate, affects a sedentary man 
twenty times as much as an active one, conspired to hurt his 
temper (for we may see by his picture that he grew fat, and 
his philosophy w r as in no respect as profound as he thought 
it) ; but he was a most kind-hearted generous man ; kept his 
pocket full of plums for children, like another Mr. Burchell ; 
gave a great deal of money away in charity, very handsomely 
too ; and was so fond of inviting friends to stay with him, that 
when they were ill, he and his family must needs have them 
to be nursed. Several actually died at his house at Fulham, 
as at an hospital for sick friends. 

It is a fact not generally known (none of his biographers 
seem to have known of it) that Richardson was the son of a 
joiner, received what education he had (which was very 
little, and did not go beyond English), at Christ's Hospital, f 
It may be wondered how he could come no better taught from 
a school which had sent forth so many good scholars ; but in 
his time, and indeed till very lately, that foundation was 
divided into several schools, none of w T hich partook of the 
}essons of the others ; and Richardson, agreeably to his 
father's intention of bringing him up to trade, was most 
probably confined to the writing-school, where all that was 
taught was writing and arithmetic. It was most likely here 
that he intimated his future career, first by writing a letter, 
at eleven years of age, to a censorious woman of fifty, who 

* Correspondence of Samual Richardson, &c, by Anna Letitia 
Barbauld, vol. i., p. 97. 

f Our authority (one of the highest in this way) is Mr. Nichols, 
iu his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv., p. 579. 



THE NOVELIST. 91 

pretended a zeal for religion ; and afterwards, at thirteen, by- 
composing love-letters to their sweethearts for three young 
women in the neighbourhood, who made him their confidant. 
To these and others he also used to read books, their mothers 
being of the party ; and they encouraged him to make 
remarks ; which is exactly the sort of life he led with 
Mrs. Chapone, Miss Fielding, and others, when in the height 
of his celebrity. " One of the young women," he informs 
us, "highly gratified with her lover's fervour, and vows of 
everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, 
1 1 cannot tell you what to write, but (her heart on her lips) 
you cannot write too kindly ;' all her fear was only that she 
should incur a slight for her kindness." This passage, with 
its pretty breathless parenthesis, is in the style of his books. 
If the writers among his female coterie in after-life owed 
their inspiration to him, he only returned to them what they 
had done for himself. Women seem to have been always 
about him, both in town and country ; which made Mrs. Bar- 
bauld say, very agreeably, that he " lived in a kind of flower- 
garden of ladies." This has been grudged him, and thought 
effeminate ; but we must make allowance for early circum- 
stances, and recollect what the garden produced for us. 
Richardson did not pretend to be able to do without female 
society. Perhaps, however, they did not quiet his sensibility 
so much as they charmed it. We think, in his Correspond- 
ence, a tendency is observable to indulge in fancies, not 
always so paternal as they agree to call them; though doubt- 
less all was said in honour, and the ladies never found reason 
to diminish their reverence. A great deal has been said of 
his vanity and the weakness of it. Vain he undoubtedly 
was, and vanity is no strength ; but it is worth bearing in 
mind, that a man is often saved from vanity, not because he 
is stronger than another, but because he is less amiable, and 
did not begin, as Richardson did, with being a favourite so 
early. Few men are surrounded, as he was, from his very 
childhood, with females ; and few people think so well of 
their species or with so much reason. In all probability too, 
he was handsome when young, which is another excuse for 
him. His vanity is more easily excused than his genius 
accounted for considering the way in which he lived. The 
tone of Lovelace's manners and language, which has created 
so much surprise in an author who was a city printer, and 
passed his life among a few friends between Fleet Street and 



92 RICHARDSON, 

a suburb, was caught, probably, not merely from Cibber, but 
from the famous profligate Duke of Wharton, with whom he 
became acquainted in the course of his business. But the 
unwearied vivacity with which he has supported it is won- 
derful. His pathos is more easily accounted for by his 
nerves, which for many years were in a constant state of ex- 
citement, particularly towards the close of his life ; which ter- 
minated in 1761, at the age of seventy-two, with the death most 
common to sedentary men of letters, a stroke of apoplexy.* 
He was latterly unable to lift a glass of wine to his mouth 
without assistance. 

At Fulham and Parson's Green (at which latter place he 
lived for the last five or six years), Eichardson used to sit 
with his guests about him, in a parlour or summer-house, 
reading, or communicating his manuscripts as he wrote them. 
The ladies made their remarks ; and alterations or vindica- 
tions ensued. His characters, agreeably to what we feel when 
we read of them (for we know them all as intimately as if we 
occupied a room in their house), interested his acquaintances 
so far that they sympathised with them as if they were real; 
and it is well known that one of his correspondents, Lady 
Bradshaigh, implored him to reform Lovelace, in order " to 
save a soul." In Salisbury Court, Eichardson, of course, had 
the same visitors about him; but the "flower-garden" is not 
talked of so much there as at Fulham. In the evening the 
ladies read and worked by themselves, and Eichardson retired 
to his study ; a most pernicious habit for a man of his bad 
nerves. He should have written early in the morning, taken 
good exercise in the day, and amused himself in the evening. 
When he walked in town it was in the park, where he 
describes himself (to a fair correspondent who wished to have 
an interview with him, and who recognised him from the 
description) as " short, rather plump, about five feet five 

* " Apoplexy cramm'd intemperance knocks 

Down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox;" — 
says Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence. It was the death which 
the good-natured, indolent poet probably expected for himself, and 
which he would have had, if a cold and fever had not interfered ; for 
there is an apoplexy of the head alone, as well as of the whole body; 
and men of letters who either exercise little, or work overmuch, seem 
almost sure to die of it, or of palsy; which is a disease analogous. 1% 
is the last stroke, given in the kind resentment of nature, to the brains 
which should have known better than bring themselves to such a pass. 
In the biography of Italian literati, " Mori' d' apoplessia"— (he die4 
of apoplexy)— is a common verdict, 



THE NOVELIST. 93 

inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom, the other a 
cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat, 
that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when 
attacked by sudden tremors or dizziness, of a light brown 
complexion, teeth not yet failing." "What follows," ob- 
serves Mrs. Barbauld, "is very descriptive of the struggle in 
his character, between innate bashfulness and a turn for 
observation:" — "Looking directly forwards, as passengers 
would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand 
of him, without moving his short neck ; a regular even pace, 
stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it ; a grey 
eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head, by 
chance lively, very lively if he sees any he loves ; if he 
approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed first on her face, but 
on her feet, and rears it up by degrees, seeming to set her 
down as so and so."* 

Latterly Richardson attended little to business. He used 
even to give his orders to his workmen in writing ; a practice 
which Sir John Hawkins is inclined to attribute to stateliness 
and bad temper, but for which Mrs. Barbauld finds a better 
reason in his bad nerves. His principal foreman also was 
deaf, as the knight himself acknowledges. Richardson en- 
couraged his men to be industrious, sometimes by putting 
half-a-crown among the types as a prize to him who came 
first in the morning, at others by sending fruit for the same 
purpose from the country. Agreeably to his natural bash- 
fulness, he was apt to be reserved with strangers. Sir John 
Hawkins tells us, that he once happened to get into the 
Fulham stage when Richardson was in it (most likely he got 
in on purpose) ; and he endeavoured to bring the novelist into 
conversation, but could not succeed, and was vexed at it. 
But Sir John was one of that numerous class of persons who, 
for reasons better known to others than to themselves, 

" Deemen gladly to the badder end," 

as the old poet says ; and Richardson probably knew this 
pragmatical person, and did not want his acquaintance. 

Johnson was among the visitors of Richardson in Salisbury 
Court. He confessed to Boswell, that although he had never 
much sought after anybody, Richardson was an exception. 
He had so much respect for him, that he took part with him 
in a preposterous undervaluing of Fielding, whom he described 

* Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 177. 



94 RICHARDSON, 

in the comparison as a mere writer of manners, and sometimes 
as hardly any writer at all. And yet he tcld Boswell that he 
had read his Amelia through "without stopping:" and ac- 
cording to Mrs. Piozzi she was his favourite heroine. In the 
comparison of Eichardson with Fielding, he was in the habit 
of opposing the nature of one to the manners of the other; 
but Fielding's manners are only superadded to his nature, 
not opposed to it, which makes all the difference. As to 
Eichardson, he was so far gone upon this point, in a mixture 
of pique and want of sympathy, that he said, if he had not 
known who Fielding was, "he should have taken him for an 
ostler." Fielding, it is true, must have vexed him greatly by 
detecting the pettiness in the character of Pamela. Eichardson, 
as a romancer, did not like to have the truth forced upon him, 
and thus was inclined to see nothing but vulgarity in the 
novelist. This must have been unpleasant to the Misses 
Fielding, the sisters, who were among the most intimate of 
Richardson's friends. Another of our author's visitors was 
Hogarth. It must not be forgotten that Eichardson was kind 
to Johnson in money matters ; and to use Mrs. Barbauld's 
phrase, had once " the honour" to be bail for him. 

We conclude our notice, which, on the subject of so original 
a man, has naturally beguiled us into some length, with an 
interesting account of his manners and way of life, communi- 
cated by one of his female friends to Mrs. Barbauld. " My 
first recollection of him," says she, " was in his house in the 
ceatre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court as it was then 
called ; and of being admitted as a playful child into his study, 
where I have often seen Dr. Young and others ; and where I 
was generally caressed and rewarded with biscuits or bonbons 
of some kind or other ; and sometimes with books, for which 
he, and some more of my friends, kindly encouraged a taste, 
even at that early age, which has adhered to me all my long 
life, and continues to be the solace of many a painful hour. I 
recollect that he used to drop in at my father's, for we lived 
nearly opposite, late in the evening to supper ; when, as he 
would say, he had worked as long as his eyes and nerves 
would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly 
and domestic chat. I even then used to creep to his knee and 
hang upon his words, for my whole family doated on him; 
and once, I recollect that at one of these evening visits, pro- 
bably about the year 1753, 1 was standing by his knee when 
my mother's maid came to summon me to bed ; upon which, 



THE NOVELIST. 95 

being unwilling to part from him and manifesting some reluct- 
ance, He begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer; 
and, on my mother's objecting that the servant would be 
wanted to wait at supper (for, in those days of friendly inter- 
course and real hospitality, a decent maid-servant was th» 
only attendant at his own and many creditable tables, where, 
nevertheless, much company was received), Mr. Richardson 
said, 1 1 am sure Miss P. is now so much a woman, that she 
does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but will conduct 
herself with so much propriety, and put out her own candle 
so carefully, that she may henceforward be indulged with 
remaining with us till supper is served.' This hint and the 
confidence it implied, had such a good effect upon me that I 
believe I never required the attendance of a servant afterwards 
while my mother lived ; and by such sort of ingenious and 
gentle devices did he use to encourage and draw in young 
people to do what was right. I also well remember the happy 
days I passed at his house at North End ; sometimes with my 
mother, but often for weeks without her, domesticated as one 
of his own children. He used to pass the greatest part of the 
week in town ; but when he came down, he used to like to 
have his family flock around him, when we all first asked and 
received his blessing, together with some small boon from his 
paternal kindness and attention, for he seldom met us empty- 
handed, and was by nature most generous and liberal. 

" The piety, order, decorum, and strict regularity that prevailed in 
his family were of infinite use to train the mind to good habits and to 
depend upon its own resources. It has been one of the means which, 
under the blessing of God, has enabled me to dispense with the 
enjoyment of what the world calls pleasures, such as are found in 
crowds, and actually to relish and prefer the calm delights of retire- 
ment and books. As soon as Mrs. Richardson arose, the beautiful 
Psalms in Smith's Devotions were read responsively in the nursery, 
by herself and daughters standing in a circle: only the two eldest 
were allowed to breakfast with her and whatever company happened 
to be in the house, for they were seldom without. x After breakfast, 
we younger ones read to her in turns the Psalms and Lessons for the 
day. We were then permitted to pursue our childish sports, or to 
walk in the garden, which I was allowed to do at pleasure; for, when 
my father hesitated upon granting that privilege for fear I should 
help myself to the fruit, Mrs. Richardson said, ' No, I have so much 
confidence in her, that, if she is put upon honour, I am certain that 
she will not touch so much as a gooseberry/ A confidence I dare 
safely aver that I never forfeited, and which has given me the power 
of walking in any garden ever since, without the smallest desire to 
touch any fruit, and taught me a lesson upon the restraint of appetite, 
Which has been useful to me all my life. We all dined at one table, 



96 MCHARDSOtf. 

&n& generally drank tea and spent the evening in Mrs, Richardsos'a 
parlour, where the practice was for one of the young ladies to read 
while the rest sat with mute attention round a large table, and 
employed themselves in some kind of needle-work. Mr. Richardson 
generally retired to his study, unless there was particular company. 

"These are trifling and childish anecdotes, and savour, perhaps 
you may think too much of egotism. They certainly can be of no 
further use to you than as they mark the extreme benevolence, 
condescension, and kindness of this exalted genius, towards young 
people; for, in general society, I know he has been accused as being 
of few words and of a particularly reserved turn. He was, however, 
all his lifetime the patron and protector of the female sex. Miss M. 
(afterwards Lady G.) passed many years in his family. She was the 
bosom friend and contemporary of my mother ; and was so much 
considered as enfant de famille in Mr. Richardson's house, that her 
portrait is introduced into a family piece. 

"He had many protegees; — a Miss Rosine, from Portugal, was 
consigned to his care ; but of her, being then at school, I never saw 
much. Most of the ladies that resided much at his house acquired 
a certain degree of fastidiousness and delicate refinement, which, 
though amiable in itself, rather disqualified them from appearing in 
general society to the advantage that might have been expected, and 
rendered an intercourse with the world uneasy to themselves, giving 
a peculiar air of shyness and reserve to their whole address; of which 
habits his own daughters partook, in a degree that has been thought 
by some a little to obscure those really valuable qualifications and 
talents they undoubtedly possessed. Yet this was supposed to be 
owing more to Mrs. Richardson than to him; who, though a truly 
good woman, had high and Harlowean notions of parental authority, 
and kept the ladies in such order, and at such a distance, that he often 
lamented, as I have been told by my mother, that they were not more 
open and conversable with him. 

"Besides those I have already named, I well remember a Mrs. 
Donellan, a venerable old lady, with sharp piercing eyes; Miss 
Mulso, &c, &c; Seeker, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Thomas 
Robinson (Lord Grantham), &c, &c, who were frequent visitors at 
his house in town and country. The ladies I have named were often 
staying at North End, at the period of his highest glory and reputa- 
tion ; and in their company and conversation his genius was matured. 
His benevolence was unbounded, as his manner of diffusing it was 
delicate and refined."* 

Richardson was buried in the nave of St. Bride's Church ; 
and a stone was placed over his remains, merely recording 
his name, the year of his death, and his age. In this church 
were also interred Wynken de Worde, the famous printer ; 
the bowels of Sackville the poet, whom we shall presently 
have occasion to mention again ; and Sir Richard Baker, the 
author of the well-known book of English Chronicles. De 
Worde resided in Fleet Street. 

Between Water Lane and the Temple, and leading out of 
* Correspondence, &c, by Mrs. Barbauld, vol. i., p. 183. 



WHITEFRIARS. 07 

Fleet Street by a street formerly called Whitefriars, which 
has been rebuilt, and christened Bouverie Street, is one of 
these precincts which long retained the immunities derived 
from their being conventual sanctuaries, and which naturally 
enough became as profane as they had been religious. The 
one before us originated in a monastery of White Friars, an 
order of Carmelites, which formerly stood in Water Lane, and 
it acquired an infamous celebrity under the slang title of 
Alsatia. The claims, however, which the inhabitants set up 
to protect debtors from arrest, seem to have originated in a 
charter granted to them by James I., in 1608. For some 
time after the Reformation and the demolition of the old 
monastery, Whitefriars was not only a sufficiently orderly 
district, but one of the most fashionable parts of the city. 
Among others of the gentry, for instance, who had houses 
here at this period, was Sir John Cheke, King Edward VI.'s 
tutor, and afterwards Secretary of State. The reader of our 
great modern novelist has been made almost as well acquainted 
with the place in its subsequent state of degradation and law- 
lessness, as if he had walked through it when its bullies were 
in full blow. The rags of their Dulcineas hang out to dry, as 
if you saw them in a Dutch picture ; and the passages are 
redolent of beer and tobacco. The sanctuary of Whitefriars 
is now extremely shrunk in its dimensions ; and the inhabi- 
tants retain but a shadow of their privileges. The nuisance, 
however, existed as late as the time of William III., who put 
an end to it; and the neighbourhood is still of more than 
doubtful virtue. One alley, dignified by the title of Lombard 
Street, is of an infamy of such long standing, that it is said to 
have begun its evil courses long before the privilege of sanc- 
tuary existed, and to have maintained them up to the present 
moment. The Carmelites complained of it, and the neigh- 
bours complain still. In the Dramatis Personse to Shadwell's 
play called the Squire of Alsatia, we have a set of characters 
so described as to bring us, one would think, sufficiently 
acquainted with the leading gentry of the neighbourhood; 
such as — 

" Cheatley. A rascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir out of 
White-fryers, but there inveigles young heirs in tail, and helps them 
to goods and money upon great disadvantages ; is bound for them, 
and shares for them till he undoes them. A lewd, impudent, 
debauch'd fellow, very expert in the cant about the town. 

" Shamwell. Cousin to the Belfonds; an heir, who being ruined by 
Cheatley, is made a decoy-duck for others r not daring to stir out of 

H 



98 WHITEFRIAES. 

Alsatia, where he lives: is bound with Cheatley for heirs, and lives 
upon 'em a dissolute, debauched life. 

" Capt. Haekman. A block-head bully of Alsatia; a cowardly, 
impudent, blustering felloAV; formerly a sergeant in Elanders, run 
from his colours, retreated into White-fryers for a very small debt, 
where by the Alsatians he is dubbed a Captain, marries one that lets 
lodgings, sells cherry brandy, &c. 

*' Scrapeall. A hypocritical, repeating, praying, psalm-singing, 
precise fellow, pretending to great piety, a godly knave, who joins 
with Cheatley, and supplies young heirs with goods and money." 

But Sir Walter, besides painting the place itself as if he 
had lived in it (vide Fortunes of Nigel r vo\. ii.), puts these 
people in action, with a spirit bej^ond anything that Shadwell 
could have done, even though the dramatist had a bit of the 
Alsatian in himself — at least as far as drinking could go, and 
a flood of gross conversation. 

Infamous, however, as this precinct was, there were some 
good houses in it, and some respectable inhabitants. The first 
Lord Sackville lived there ; another inhabitant was Ogilby, 
who was a decent man, though a bad poet, and taught dancing; 
and Shirley another. It appears also to have been a resort of 
fencing-masters, which probably helped to bring worse com- 
pany. They themselves, indeed, were in no good repute. 
One of them, a man of the name of Turner, living in White- 
friars, gave rise to a singular instance of revenge recorded in 
the State Trials. Lord Sanquire, a Scotch nobleman, in the 
time of James L, playing with Turner at foils, and making 
too great a show of his wish to put down a master of the art 
(probably with the insolence common to the nobility of that 
period), was pressed upon so hard by the man, that he received 
a thrust which put out one of his eyes. " This mischief," says 
Wilson, " was much regretted by Turner ; and the baron, 
being conscious to himself that he meant his adversary no 
good, took the accident w r ith as much patience as men that 
lose one eye by their own default use to do for the preserva- 
tion of the other." " Some time after," continues this writer, 
" being in the court of the late great Henry of France, and 
the King (courteous to strangers), entertaining discourse with 
him, asked him, 'How he lost his eye:' he (cloathing his 
answer in a better shrowd than a plain fencer's) told him ' It 
was done with a sword.' The King replies, l Doth the man 
live?' and that question gave an end to the discourse, but 
was the beginner of a strange confusion in his working fancy, 
which neither time nor distance could compose, carrying it in 



WHITEFEIARS. 99 

his breast some years after, till he came into England, where 
he hired two of his countrymen, Gray and Carliel, men of low 
and mercenary spirits, to murther him, which they did with 
a case of pistols in his house in Whitefriars many years 
after."* For many years — read five — enough, however, to 
make such a piece of revenge extraordinary. Gray and 
Carliel were among his followers. Gray, however, did not 
assist in the murder. His mind misgave him ; and Carliel 
got another accomplice, named Irweng. M These two, about 
seven o'clock in the evening (to proceed in the words of 
Coke's report), came to a house in the Friars, which Turner 
used to frequent, as he came to his school, which was near 
that place, and finding Turner there, they saluted one another ; 
and Turner, with one of his friends, sat at the door asking 
them to drink ; but Carliel and Irweng, turning about to cock 
the pistol, came back immediately, and Carliel, drawing it 
from under his coat, discharged it upon Turner, and gave 
him a mortal wound near the ieft pap ; so that Turner, after 
having said these words, ' Lord, have mercy upon me ! I am 
killed,' immediately fell down.. Whereupon Carliel and 
Irweng fled, Carliel to the town, Irweng towards the river ; 
but mistaking his way, and entering into a court where they 
sold wood, which was no thoroughfare, he was taken. Carliel 
likewise fled, and so did also the Baron of Sanchar. The 
ordinary officers of justice did their utmost, but could not 
take them ; for, in fact, as appeared afterwards, Carliel fled 
into Scotland, and Gray towards the sea, thinking to go to 
Sweden, and Sanchar hid himself in England." | 

James, who had shown such favour to the Scotch as to 
make the English jealous, and who also hated an ill-natured 
action, when it was not to do good to any of his favourites, 
thought himself bound to issue a promise of reward for the 
arrest of Sanquire and the others. It was successful ; and all 
three were hung, Carliel and Irweng in Fleet Street, opposite 
the great gate of Whitefriars (the entrance of the present 
Bouverie Street), and Sanquire in Palace Yard, before West- 
minster Hall. He made a singular defence, very good and 
penitent, and yet remarkably illustrative of the cheap rate at 
which plebeian blood was held in those times ; and no doubt 
his death was a great surprise to him. The people, not yet 

* Life and Reign of King James I., quoted in Howell's State Trials, 
vol. ii., p. 745. 

f State Trials, ut supra, p. 762, 

JI2 



100 the temple: 

enlightened on these points, took his demeanour in such good 
part, that they expressed great pity for him, till they per- 
ceived that he died a Catholic ! 

This and other pretended sanctuaries were at length put 
down by an Act of Parliament passed about the beginning of 
the last century. It is curious that the once lawless domain 
of Alsatia should have had the law itself for its neighbour; 
but Sir Walter has shown us, that they had more sympathies 
than might be expected. It was a local realisation of the old 
proverb of extremes meeting. We now step out of this old 
chaos into its quieter vicinity, which, however, was not always 
as quiet as it is now. The Temple, as its name imports, was 
once the seat of the Knights Templars, an order at once 
priestly and military, originating in the crusades, and whose 
business it was to defend the Temple at Jerusalem. How 
they degenerated, and what sort of voavs they were in the 
habit of making, instead of those of chastity and humility, 
the modern reader need not be told, after the masterly pic- 
tures of them in the writer from whom we have just taken 
another set of ruffians. The Templars were dissolved in the 
reign of Edward II., and their house occupied by successive 
nobles, till it came into the possession of the law, in whose 
hands it was confirmed "for ever" by James I. We need not 
enter into the origin of its division into two parts, the Inner 
and Middle Temple. Suffice to say, that the word Middle, 
which implies a third Temple, refers to an outer one, or third 
portion of the old buildings, which does not appear to have been 
ever occupied by laAvyers, but came into possession of the 
celebrated Essex family, whose name is retained in the street 
where it was situated, on the other side of Temple Bar. 
There is nothing remaining of the ancient buildings but the 
church built in 1185, which is a curiosity justly admired, 
particularly for its effigies of knights, some of whose cross 
legs indicate that they had either been to the Holy Land, or 
have been supposed to or vowed to go thither. One of the 
band is acertained to have been Geoffrey de Magnavile, Earl 
of Essex, who was killed at Benwell in Cambridgeshire, in 
1148. Among the others are supposed to be the Marshals, 
first, second, and third Earls of Pembroke, who all died in 
the early part of the thirteenth century. But even these have 
not been identified upon any satisfactory grounds ; and with 
regard to some of the rest, not so much as a probable conjee? 
tare has been offered, 



ITS MONUMENTS. 



101 



As it is an opinion still prevailing, that these cross-legged 
knights are Knights Templars, we have copied below the 




TOMBS OF KNIGHTS IN TEMPLE CHURCH. 



most complete information respecting them which we have 
hitherto met with. And the passage is otherwise curious.* 

* " It is an opinion which universally prevails with regard to those 
cross-legged monuments," says Dr. Nash, "that they were all erected 
to the memory of Knights Templars. Now to me it is very evident 
that not one of them belonged to that order; but, as Mr. Habingdon, 
in describing this at Alve church, hath justly expressed it, to Knights 
of the Holy Voyage. For the order of Knights Templars followed 
the rule of the Canons regular of St. Austin, and, as such, were under 
a vow of celibacy. Now there is scarcely one of these monuments 
which is certainly known for whom it is erected; but it is as certain, 
that the person it represented was a married man. The Knights 
Templars always wore a white habit, with a red cross on the left 
•boulder. I believe, not a single instance can be produced of either 



102 the temple: 

The two Temples, or law colleges, occupy a large space of 
ground between Whitefriars and Essex Street ; Fleet Street 
bounding them on the north, and the river on the south. 
They compose an irregular mass of good substantial houses, 
in lanes and open places, the houses being divided into 
chambers, or floors for separate occupants, some of which are 
let to persons not in the profession. The garden about forty 
years ago was enlarged, and a muddy tract under it, on the 
side of the Thames, converted into a pleasant walk. This 
garden is still not very large, but it deserves its name both 
for trees and flowers. There is a descent into it after the 
Italian fashion, from a court with a fountain in it, surrounded 
with trees, through which the view of the old walls and 
buttresses of the Middle Temple Hall is much admired. But 
a poet's hand has touched the garden, and made it bloom 
with roses above the real. It is the scene in Shakspeare, of 
the origin of the factions of York and Lancaster. 

the mantle or cross being carved on any of these monuments, which 
surely would not have been omitted, as by it they were distinguished 
from all other orders, had these been really designed to represent 
Knights Templars. Lastly, this order was not confined to England 
only, but dispersed itself all over Europe : yet it will be very difficult 
to find one cross-legged monument anywhere out of England; whereas 
they would have abounded in Erance, Italy, and elsewhere, had it 
been a fashion peculiar to that famous order. But though, for these 
reasons, I cannot allow the cross-legged monuments to have been for 
Knights Templars, yet they had some relation to them, being the 
memorials of those zealous devotees, who had either been in Palestine, 
personally engaged in what was called the Holy War, or had laid 
themselves under a vow to go thither, though perhaps they were pre- 
vented from it by death. Some few, indeed, might possibly be erected 
to the memory of persons who had made pilgrimages there merely 
out of private devotion. Among the latter, probably, was that of the 
lady of the family of Mepham, of Mepham in Yorkshire, to whose 
memory a cross-legged monument was placed in a chapel adjoining 
to the one collegiate church of Howden, in Yorkshire, and is at this 
day remaining, together with that of her husband on the same tomb. 
As this religious madness lasted no longer than the reign of Henry III. 
(the tenth and last crusade being published in the year 1268), and 
the whole order of Knights Templars was dissolved by Edward H., 
military expeditions to the Holy Land, as well as devout pilgrimages 
there, had their period by the year 1312; consequently none of those 
cross-legged monuments areof a later date than the reign of Edward II., 
or beginning of Edward III., nor of an earlier than that of King 
Stephen, when these expeditions first took place in this kingdom." — 
History and Antiquities of Worcestershire, fol. vol. i., p. 31. Since 
Dr. Nash wrote, however, it has been denied that even the cross legs 
had any thing to do with crusades. 



EMINENT NAMES CONNECTED WITH IT. 103 

PLANTAGENET. 

" Since you are tongue-ty'd, and so loth to speak, 
In dumb significence proclaim your thoughts j 
Let him that is a true born gentleman, 
And stands upon the honour of his birth, 
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, 
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me. 

SOMERSET. 

Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer, 
But dare maintain the party of the truth, 
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me. 

WARWICK. 

I love no colours ; and, without all colour 

Of base insinuating flattery, 

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet. 

SUFFOLK. 

I pluck this red rose with young Somerset ; 
And say withal I think he held the right." 

There were formerly rooks in the Temple trees, a colony 
brought by Sir Edward Northey, a well-known lawyer in 
Queen Anne's time, from his grounds at Epsom. It was a 
pleasant thought, supposing that the colonists had no objec- 
tion. The rook is a grave legal bird, both in his coat and 
habits; living in communities, yet to himself; and strongly 
addicted to discussions of meum and tuum. The neighbour- 
hood, however, appears to have been too much for him ; for, 
upon inquiring on the spot, we were told that there had been 
no rooks for many years. 

The oldest mention of the Temple as a place for lawyers 
has been commonly said to be found in a passage of Chaucer, 
who is reported to have been of the Temple himself. It 
is in his character of the Manciple, or Steward, whom he 
pleasantly pits against his learned employers, as outwitting 
even themselves : 

"A gentle manciple was there of a temple, 
Of which achatours (purchasers) mighten take ensample, 
For to ben wise in buying of vitaille. 
For whether that be paid, or took by taille, 
Algate he waited so in his achate, 
That he was ay before in good estate; 
Now is not that of God a full fair grace, 
That such a lewed (ignorant) mannes wit shall pass 
The wisdom of a heap of learned men ? " * 



* Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We quote no edition, because 
where we could we have modernised the spellings which is a justice 



104 ffiE TEMPLE i 

Spenser, in liis epic way, not disdaining to bring the home 
liest images into his verse, for the sake of the truth in them, 
speaks of — 

" those bricky towers 

The which on Thames' broad aged back do ride, 

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers ; 

There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide, 

Till they decayed through pride."* 

The " studious lawyers," in their towers by the water side, 
present a quiet picture. Yet in those times, it seems, they 
were apt to break into overt actions of vivacity, a little 
excessive, and such as the habit of restraint, inclines people 
to-, before they have arrived at years of discretion. In 
Henry VIII.'s time the gentlemen of the Temple were addicted 
to " shove and slip-groats,""|" which became forbidden them 
under a penalty ; and in the age in which Spenser wrote, so 
many encounters had taken place, of a dangerous description, 
that Templars were prohibited from carrying any other 
weapon into the hall (the dining room), " than a dagger or 
knife," — " as if," says Mr. Malcolm, " those were not more 
than sufficient to accomplish unpremeditated deaths"! We 
are to suppose, however, that gentlemen would not kill each 
other, except with swords. The dagger, or carving knive, 
which it was customary to carry about the person in those 
days, was for the mutton. § 

A better mode of recreating and giving vent to their 

to this fine old author in a quotation, in order that nobody may pass 
it over. With regard to Chaucer being of the Temple, and to his 
beating the Franciscan in Fleet Street, all which is reported, depends 
upon the testimony of a Mr. Buckley, who, according to Speght, had 
seen a Temple record to that effect. 

* Prothalamion. 

f " Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports 
occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called 
Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and 
only practised by such as frequent the tap-rooms." — Strutfs Sports 
and Pastimes of the People of England, 1828, chap, i., sect. xix. It is 
played with halfpence, which are jerked with the palm of the hand 
from the edge of a table, towards certain numbers described upon it. 

J Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 290. 

§ Sir John Davies, who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench, and wrote a poem on the Art of Dancing (so lively was 
the gravity of those days !) " bastinadoed" a man at dinner in the 
Temple Hall, for which he was expelled. The man probably deserved 
it, for Davies had a fine nature ; and he went back again by favour 
of the excellent Lord Ellesmere. 



MASQUES AND PAGEANTS. 105 

animal spirits, was the custom prevalent among the lawyers 
at that period of presenting masques and pageants. They 
were great players, with a scholarly taste for classical subjects ; 
and the gravest of them did not disdain to cater in this way 
for the amusement of their fellows, sometimes for that of 
crowned heads. The name of Bacon is to be found among 
the " getters up" of a show at Gray's Inn, for the entertain- 
ment of the sovereign; and that of Hyde, on a similar 
occasion, in the reign of Charles I. 

A masque has come down to us written by William Browne, 
a disciple of Spenser, expressly for the society of which he 
was a member, and entitled the Inner Temple Masque. It is 
upon the story of Circe and Ulysses, and is worthy of the 
school of poetry out of which he came. Beaumont wrote 
another, called the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's 
Inn. A strong union has always existed between the law 
and the belles-lettres, highly creditable to the former, or 
rather naturally to be expected from the mode in which 
lawyers begin their education, and the diversity of knowledge 
which no men are more in the way of acquiring afterwards. 
Blackstone need not have written his farewell to the Muses. 
If he had been destined to be a poet, he could not have taken 
his leave ; and, as an accomplished lawyer, he was always 
within the pale of the Uteres humaniores. The greatest prac- 
tical lawyers, such as Coke and Plowdon, may not have 
been the most literary, but those who have understood the 
law in the greatest and best spirit have ; and the former, 
great as they may be, are yet but as servants and secretaries 
to the rest. They know where to find, but the others know 
best how to apply. Bacon, Clarendon, Selden, Somers, 
Cowper, Mansfield, where all men of letters. So are the 
Broughams and Campbells of the present day. Pope says, 
that Mansfield would have been another Ovid. This may be 
doubted ; but nobody should doubt that the better he under- 
stood a poet, the fitter he was for universality of judgment. 
The greatest lawyer is the greatest legislator. 

The " pert Templar," of whom we hear so much between 
the reigns of the Stuarts and the late King, came up with the 
growth of literature and the coffee-houses. Every body then 
began to write or to criticise ; and young men, brought up in 
the mooting of points, and in the confidence of public speak- 
ing, naturally pressed among the foremost. Besides, a 
variety of wits had issued from the Temple in the reign 01 



106 the temple; 

Charles and his brother, and their successors in lodging took 
themselves for their heirs in genius. The coffee-houses by 
this time had become cheap places to talk in. They were 
the regular morning lounge and evening resource ; and every 
lad who had dipped his finger and thumb into Dryden's 
snuff-box, thought himself qualified to dictate for life. In 
Pope's time these pretensions came to be angrily rejected, 
partly, perhaps, because none of the reigning wits, with the 
exception of Congreve, had had a Temple education. 

" Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came, 
The same their talents, and their tastes the same ; 
Each prompt to query, answer, and debate, 
And smit with love of poetry and prate." * 

"We could quote many other passages to the same purpose, 
but we shall come to one presently which will suffice for all, 
and exhibit the young Templar of those days in all the glory 
of his impertinence. At present the Templars make no more 
pretensions than other well-educated men. Many of them 
are still connected with the literature of the day, but in the 
best manner and with the soundest views ; and if there is no 
pretension to wit, there is the thing itself. It would be end- 
less to name all the celebrated lawyers who have had to do 
with the Temple. Besides, we shall have to notice the most 
eminent of them in other places, where they passed a greater 
portion of their lives. We shall therefore confine ourselves 
to the mention of such as have lived in it without being 
lawyers, or thrown a grace over it in connection with wit and 
literature. 

Chaucer, as we have just observed, is thought, upon slight 
evidence, to have been of the Temple. We know not who ' 
the Mr. Buckley was, that says he saw his name in the 
record; and the name, if there, might have been that of 
some other Chaucer. The name is said to be not unfrequent 
in records under the Norman dynasty. We are told by 
Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speght's edition of the 
poet's works (published a few years ago from the manuscript 
by Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer and Gower), 
that "it is most certain to be gathered by circumstances of 
records that the lawyers were not in the Temple until towards 
the latter part of the reign of King Edward III., at which 
time Chaucer was a grave man, holden in great credit, and 
employed in embassy." " So that methinketh," adds the 
* Dunciad, book ii. 



EMINENT NAMES CONNECTED WITH IT. 107 

writer, "he should not be of that house; and yet, if he then 
were, I should judge it strange that he should violate the 
rules of peace and gravity in those years." 

The first English tragedy of any merit, Gorbuduc, was 
written in the Temple by Thomas Norton and Thomas 
/ Sackville, afterwards the celebrated statesman, and founder of 
the title of Dorset. He was author of a noble performance, 
the Induction for the Mirrour of Magistrates, in which there 
is a foretaste of the allegorical gusto of Spenser. Ealeigh was 
of the Temple ; Selden, who died in Whitefriars ; Lord 
Clarendon ; Beaumont ; two other of our old dramatists, Ford 
and Marston (the latter of whom was lecturer of the Middle 
Temple) ; Wycherly, whom it is said the Duchess of Cleve- 
land used to visit, in the habit of a milliner ; Congreve, Eowe, 
Fielding, Burke, and Cowper. Goldsmith was not of the 
Temple, but he had chambers in it, died there, and was buried 
in the Temple Church. He resided, first on the Library 
Staircase, afterwards in King's Bench Walk, and finally at 
No. 2, Brick Court, where he had a first floor elegantly 
furnished. It was in one of the former lodgings that, being 
visited by Dr. Johnson, and expressing something like a shame- 
faced hope that he should soon be in lodgings better furnished, 
" Johnson," says Boswell, " at the same time checked him, and 
paid him a handsome compliment, implying that a man of 
talent should be above attention to such distinctions. ' Nay, 
sir, never mind that : Nil te quo2siveris extra." 1 * (It is only 
yourself that need be looked for). He died in Brick Court. 
It is said that when he was on his deathbed, the landing- 
place was filled with inquirers, not of the most mentionable 
description, who lamented him heartily, for he was lavish of 
his money as he went along Fleet Street. We are told by 
one of the writers of the life prefixed to his works (probably 
Bishop Percy, who contributed the greater part of it), that 
11 he was generous in the extreme, and so strongly affected by 
compassion, that he has been known at midnight to abandon his 
rest in order to procure relief and an asylum for a poor dying 
object who was left destitute in the streets." This, surely, 
ought to be praise to no man, however benevolent : but it is, 
in the present state of society. However, the offices of the 
good Samaritan are now reckoned among the things that may 
be practised as well as preached, without diminution of a 
man's reputation for common-sense ; and this is a great step. 

* Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit., 8vo. 1816, vol. iv., p. 27. 



108 GOLDSMITH — BOSWELL's fflRST VISIT* 

We will here mention, that Goldsmith had another residence 
in Fleet Street. He wrote his Vicar of Wakefield in Wine 
Office Court. Of the curious circumstances under which this 
delightful novel was sold, various inaccurate accounts have 
been given. The following is Boswell's account, taken from 
Dr. Johnson's own mouth :— 

" I received one morning," said Johnson, " a message from poor 
Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power 
to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. 
I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accord- 
ingly went to him as soon as I was dressed, and found that his land- 
lady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent 
passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had 
a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the 
bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the 
means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had 
a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into 
it, and saw its merit ; told the landlady I should soon return, and 
having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought 
Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating 
his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." * 

Johnson himself lived for some time in the Temple. It was 
there that he was first visited by his biographer, who took 
rooms in Farrars Buildings in order to be near him. His 
appearance and manners on this occasion, especially as our 
readers are now of the party, are too characteristic to be 
omitted. " His chambers," says Boswell, " were on the first 
floor of No. 1, Middle Temple Lane — and I entered them with 
an impression given me by the Rev. Dr. Blair, of Edinburgh, 
who had been introduced to him not long before, and described 
his having ' found the giant in his den,' an expression which, 
when I came to be pretty well acquainted with Johnson, I 
repeated to him, and he was diverted at this picturesque 
account of himself. . . . 

" He received me very courteously ; but it must be confessed that 
his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were sufficiently 
uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty ; he had on a 
little shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head ; 
his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose ; his black 
worsted stockings ill-drawn up ; and he had a pair of unbuckled 
shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were 
forgotten the moment he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I 
do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I 
also rose ; but he said to me, " Nay, don't go.' — ' Sir/ said I, ' I am 
afraid that I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow me to sit 
and hear you.' He seemed pleased with this compliment which I 

* Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 398. 



JOHNSON AND MADAME DE BOUFFLERS. 109 

sincerely paid him, and answered, ' Sir, I am obliged to any man who 
visits me.' "* (He meant that it relieved his melancholy.) 

It was in a dress of this sort, and without his hat, that he 
was seen rushing one day after two of the highest-bred visitors 
conceivable, in order to hand one of them to her coach. 
These were his friend Beauclerc, of the St. Albans family, 
and Madame de Boufflers, mother (if we mistake not) of the 
Chevalier de Boufflers, the celebrated French wit. Her re- 
report, when she got home, must have been overwhelming ; 
but she was clever and amiable, like her son, and is said to 
have appreciated the talents of the great uncouth. Beauclerc, 
however, must repeat the story : — 

" When Madame de Boufflers," says he, " was first in England, she 
was desirous to see Johnson. I accordingly went with her to his 
chambers in the Temple, where she was entertained with his conver- 
sation for some time. When our visit was over, she and I left him,, 
and were got into Inner Temple Lane, when all at once I heard a 
noise like thunder. This was occasioned by Johnson, who, it seems, 
on a little recollection, had taken it into his head that he ought to 
have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of 
quality ; and eager to show himself a man of gallantry, was hurry- 
ing down the stairs in violent agitation. He overtook us before we 
reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame 
de Boufflers, seized her hand and conducted her to the coach. His 
dress was a rusty-brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of 
slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the 
sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. A 
considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little 
struck by his singular appearance." f 

It was in the Inner Temple Lane one night, being seized 
with a fit of merriment at something that touched his fancy, 
not without the astonishment of his companions, who could 
not see the joke, that Johnson went roaring all the way to the 
Temple-gate ; where, being arrived, he burst into such a 
convulsive laugh, says Boswell, that in order to support him- 
self he " laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot- 
pavement, and sent forth peals so loud, that in the silence of 
the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to 
Fleet-ditch. This most ludicrous exhibition," continues his 
follower, " of the awful, melancholy, and venerable Johnson, 
happened well to counteract the feelings of sadness which I 
used to experience when parting from him for a considerable 
time. I accompanied him to his door, where he gave me his 
blessing." J 

* Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 378. 
f Ibid, vol. ii., p. 421. 
£ Ibid, vol. ii., p. 271. 



110 BEN JONSON AND THE DEVIL TAVERN. 

Between the Temple-gates, at one time, lived Bernard 
Lintot, who was in no better esteem with authors than the 
other great bookseller of those times, Jacob Tonson. There 
is a pleasant anecdote of Dr. Young's addressing him a letter 
by mistake, which Bernard opened, and found it begin thus : — ■ 
" That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel." — " It must 
have been very amusing," said Young, " to have seen him in 
his rage : he was a great sputtering fellow."* 

Between the gates and Temple-bar, but nearer to the latter, 
was the famous Devil Tavern, where Ben Jonson held his 
club. Messrs. Child, the bankers, bought it in 1787, and the 
present houses were erected on its site. We believe that the 
truly elegant house of Messrs. Hoare, their successors, does 
not interfere with the place on which it stood. We rather 
think it was very near to Temple-bar, perhaps within a house 
or two. The club-room, which was afterwards frequently 
used for balls, was called the Apollo, and was large and hand- 
some, with a gallery for music. Probably the house had 
originally been a private abode of some consequence. The 
Leges Convivales, which Jonson wrote for his club, and which 
are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style 
of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that 
dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has 
been said by his advocates, and the good qualities he un- 
doubtedly possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. 
" Insipida poemata," says he, "nulla recitantur" (Let nobody 
repeat to us insipid poetry) ; as if all that he should read of 
his own must infallibly be otherwise. The club at the Devil 
does not appear to have resembled the higher one at the 
Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him. 
He most probably had it all to himself. This is the tavern 
mentioned by Pope : — 

" And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, 
He swears the Muses met him at the Devil." 

It was in good repute at the beginning of the last century. 
" I dined to-day," says Swift, in one of his letters to Stella, 
" with Dr. Garth and Mr. Addison at the Devil Tavern, near 
Temple-bar, and Garth treated : and it is well I dine every 
day, else I should be longer making out my letters ; for we 
are yet in a very dull state, only inquiring every day after 
new elections, where the Tories carry it among the new 
* Spence's Anecdotes, Singer's edit. p. S55, 



FAMOUS COFFEE-HOUSES. Ill 

members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy 
and undisputed ; and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen 
king, he would hardly be refused."* Yet Addison was a 
Whig. Addison had not then had his disputes with Pope 
and others ; and his intercourse, till his sincerity became 
doubted, was very delightful. It is impossible to read of those 
famous wits dining together and not lingering upon the occa- 
sion a little, and wishing we could have heard them talk. 
Yet wits have their uneasiness, because of their wit. Swift 
was probably not very comfortable at this dinner. He was 
then beginning to feel awkward Avith his Whig friends ; and 
Garth, in the previous month of September, had written a 
defence of Godolphin, the ousted Minister, which was unhand- 
somely attacked in the Examiner by their common acquaintance 
Prior, himself formerly a Whig. 

There was a multitude of famous shops and coffee-houses 
in this quarter, all of which make a figure in the Tatter and 
other works, such as Nando's coffee-house ; Dick's (still ex- 
tant as Kichard's) ; the Rainbow (which is said to have been 
indicted in former times for the nuisance of selling coffee); 
Ben Tooke's (the bookseller); Lintot's; and Charles Mather's, 
alias Bubble-boy, the Toyman, who, when Sir Timothy 
Shallow accuses him of selling him a cane " for ten pieces, 
while Tom Empty had as good a one for five," exclaims, 
" Lord ! Sir Timothy, I am concerned that you, whom I took 
to understand canes better than anybody in town, should be 
so overseen ! Why, Sir Timothy, yours is a true jambee, and 
esquire Empty's only a plain dragon." f 

The fire of London stopped at the Temple Exchange coffee- 
house ; a circumstance which is recorded in an inscription, 
stating the house to have been the last of the houses burnt, 
and the first restored. The old front of this house was taken 
down about a century ago ; but on its being rebuilt, the stone 
with the inscription was replaced. 

But we must now cross over the way to Shire Lane, which 
is close to Temple Bar on the opposite side. 

* Swift's Works, ut supra, vol. iv., p. 41. 

f Tatler, No. 142. According to the author of a lively rattling 
book, conversant with the furniture of old times, Arbuthnot was a 
great amateur in sticks. " My uncle," says he, " was universally 
allowed to be as deeply skilled in caneology as any one, Dr. Arbuthnot 
Hot excepted, whose science on important questions was quoted even 
after his death ; for his collection of the various headed sticks and 
canes, from the time of the first Charles, taken together, was unri- 
valled."— Wine and Walnuts, vol. i., p. 242. 



112 TEMPLE BAR. 

Here, " in ancient times," says Maitland, writing in the 
middle of the last century, " were only posts, rails, and a 
chain, such as are now at Holborn, Smithfield, and "White- 
chapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected 
across the street, with a narrow gateway, and an entry on the 
south side of it under the house." The present gate was 
built by Wren after the great fire, but although the work of 
so great a master, is hardly worth notice as a piece of archi- 
tecture. It must be allowed that Wren could do poor things 
as well as good, even when not compelled by a vestry. As 
the last of the city gates, however, we confess we should be 
sorry to see it pulled down, though we believe there is a 
general sense that it is in the way. If it were handsome or 
venerable we should plead hard for it, because it would then 
be a better thing than a mere convenience. The best thing 
we know of it is a jest of Goldsmith's ; and the worst, the 
point on which the jest turned. Goldsmith was coming from 
Westminster Abbey, with Dr. Johnson, where they had been 
looking at the tombs in Poets' Corner, and Johnson had 
quoted a line from Ovid : — 

" Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis." 
(Perhaps, some day, our names may mix with theirs.) 

" When we got to Temple Bar," says Johnson, "Goldsmith 
stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered 
to me (' in allusion,' says Boswell, l to Dr. Johnson's supposed 
political opinions, and perhaps to his own,') 

" ' Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.' " 
(Perhaps, some day, our names may mix with theirs.') 

These heads belonged to the rebels who were executed for 
rising in favour of the Pretender. The brutality of such 
spectacles, which outrage the last feelings of mortality, and as 
often punish honest mistakes as anything else, is not likely to 
be repeated. Yet such an effect has habit in reconciling 
men's minds to the most revolting, and sometimes the most 
dangerous customs, that here were two Jacobites, one of 
whom made a jest of what we should now regard with horror. 
However, Johnson must often have felt bitterly as he passed 
there; and the jesting of such men is frequently nothing but 
salve for a wound. 

Shire Lane still keeps its name, and we hope, however 
altered and improved, it will never have any other ; for here, 
at the upper end, is described as residing, old Isaac Bickerstaff, 



SHIRE LANE. — KIT-KAT CLUB. 113 

the Tatler, the more venerable but not the more delightful 
double of Richard Steele, the founder of English periodical 
literature. The public-house called the Trumpet, now known 
as the Duke of York, at which the Tatler met his club, is 
still remaining. At his house in the lane he dates a great 
number of his papers, and receives many interesting visitors ; 
and here it was that he led down into Fleet Street that 
immortal deputation of " twaddlers " from the country, who, 
as a celebrated writer has observed, hardly seem to have 
settled their question of precedence to this hour.* 

In Shire Lane is said to have originated the famous Kit-Kat 
Club, which consisted of " thirty-nine distinguished noblemen 
and gentlemen, zealously attached to the Protestant succession 
of the house of Hanover." " The club," continues a note in 
Spence by the editor, " is supposed to have derived its name 
from Christopher Katt, a pastry-cook, who kept the house 
where they dined, and excelled in making mutton-pies, which 
always formed a part of their bill of fare ; these pies, on 
account of their excellence, were called Kit-Kats. The 
summer meetings were sometimes held at the Upper Flask on 
Hampstead Heath. "f 

"You have heard of the Kit-Kat Club," says Pope to Spence. 
" The master of the house where the club met was Christopher Katt; 
Tonson was secretary. The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berwick 
were entered of it, Jacob said he saw they were just going to be 
ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem on the 
top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, and said a man 
who would do that, would cut a man's throat. So that he had the 
good and the forms of the society much at heart. The paper was all 
in Lord Halifax's handwriting of a subscription of four hundred 
guineas for the encouragement of good comedies, and was dated 1709, 
soon after they broke up. Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Van- 
brugh, Manwaring, Stepney, Walpole, and Pulteney, were of it ; so 
was Lord Dorset and the present Duke. Manwaring, whom we hear 
nothing of now, was the ruling man in all conversations; indeed, 
what he wrote had very little merit in it. Lord Stanhope and the 
Earl of Essex were also members. Jacob has his own, and all their 
pictures, by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Each member gave his, and he is 
going to build a room for them at Barn Elms." J 

It is from the size at which these portraits were taken (a 
three-quarter length), that the word Eat-Kat came to be 
applied to pictures. The society afterwards met in higher 
places ; but humbleness of locality is nothing in these matters. 
The refinement consists in the company, and in whatever they 

* Tatler, No. 86. 

f Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, p. 337. $ Ibid. 

I 



114 ISAAC WALTON. 

choose to throw a grace over, whether venison or beef. The 
great thing is, not the bill of fare, but, as Swift called it, the 
" bill of company." 

We cross to the south side of the street again, and come to 
Mrs. Salmon's. It is a curious evidence of the fluctuation of 
the great tide in commercial and growing cities, that, a cen- 
tury ago, this immortal old gentlewoman, renowned for her 
wax-work, gives as a reason for removing from St. Martin's- 
le-Grand to Fleet Street, that it was " a more convenient 
place for the coaches of the quality to stand unmolested."* 
Some of the houses in this quarter are of the Elizabethan age, 
with floors projecting over the others, and looking pressed 
together like burrows. The inmates of these humble tene- 
ments (unlike those of great halls and mansions) seem as if 
they must have had their heights taken, and the ceiling made 
to fit. Yet the builders were liberal of their materials. Over 
the way, near the west corner of Chancery Lane, stood an 
interesting specimen of this style of building, in the house of 
the famous old angler, Isaac Walton. 

Walton's was the second house from the lane, the corner 
house being an inn, long distinguished by the sign of the 
Harrow. He appears to have long lived here, carrying on 
the business of a linen-draper about the year 1624. Another 
person, John Mason, a hosier, occupied one-half of the tene- 
ment. Walton afterwards removed to another house in 
Chancery Lane, a few doors up from Fleet Street, on the 
west side, where he kept a sempster's, or milliner's shop. 

A great deal has been said lately of the merits and demerits 
of angling, and Isaac has suffered in the discussion, beyond 
what is agreeable to the lovers of that gentle pleasure. Un- 
fortunately the brothers of the angle do not argue ingenuously. 
They always omit the tortures suffered by the principal party, 
and affect to think you affected if you urge them ; whereas 
their only reason for avoiding the point is, that it is not to be 
defended. If it is, we may defend, by an equal abuse of 
reason, any amusement which is to be obtained at another 
being's expense ; and an evil genius might angle for ourselves, 
and twitch us up, bleeding and roaring, into an atmosphere 
that would stifle us. But fishes do not roar ; they cannot 
express any sound of suffering ; and therefore the angler 
chooses to think they do not suffer, more than it is convenient 
to him to fancy. Now it is a poor sport that depends for 
* Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 600. 



INHUMANITY OF ANGLING. 115 

its existence on the want of a voice in the sufferer, and of 
imagination in the sportsman. Angling, in short, is not to 
be defended on any ground of reflection ; and this is the worst 
thing to say of Isaac ; for he was not unaware of the objections 
to his amusement, and he piqued himself upon being contem- 
plative. 

Anglers have been defended upon the ground of their 
having had among them so many pious men ; but unfortu- 
nately men may be selfishly as well as nobly pious ; and even 
charity itself may be practised, as well as cruelty deprecated, 
upon principles which have a much greater regard to a man's 
own safety and future comfort, than anything which concerns 
real Christian beneficence. Doubtless there have been many 
good and humane men anglers, as well as many pleasant men. 
There have also been some very unpleasant ones — Sir John 
Hawkins among them. They make a well-founded pretension 
to a love of nature and her scenery ; but it is a pity they 
cannot relish it without this pepper to the poor fish. Walton's 
book contains many passages in praise of rural enjoyment, 
which affect us almost like the fields and fresh air themselves, 
though his brethren have exalted it beyond its value; and his 
lives of his angling friends, the Divines, have- been prepos- 
terously over-rated. If angling is to be defended upon good 
and manly grounds, let it ; it is no longer to be defended on 
any other. The best thing to be said for it (and the instance 
is worthy of reflection) is, that anglers have been brought up 
in the belief of its innocence, and that an inhuman custom is 
too powerful for the most humane. The inconsistency is to 
be accounted for on no other grounds ; nor is it necessary or 
desirable that it should be. It is a remarkable illustration of 
what Plato said, when something was defended on the ground 
of its being a trifle, because it was a custom. " But custom," 
said he, " is no trifle." Here, among persons of a more 
equivocal description, are some of the humanest men in the 
world, who Avill commit what other humane men reckon 
among the most inhuman actions, and make an absolute 
pastime of it. Let one of their grandchildren be brought up 
in the reverse opinion, and see what he will think of it. This, 
to be sure, might be said to be only another instance of the 
effect of education; but nobody, the most unprejudiced, thinks 
it a bigotry in Shakspeare and Steele to have brought us to 
feel for the brute creation in general ; and whatever we may 
incline to think for the accommodation of our propensities, 

I 2 



116 ABRAHAM COWLEY. 

there will still remain the unanswered and always avoided 
argument, of the dumb and torn fish themselves, who die 
agonised, in the midst of our tranquil looking on, and for no 
necessity. 

John Whitney, author of the Genteel Recreation, or the 
Pleasures of Angling, a poem printed in the year 1700, 
recommends the lovers of the art to bait with the eyes of fish, 
in order to decoy others of the same species. A writer in the 
Censura Liter aria exclaims, " What a Nero of Anglers doth 
this proclaim John Whitney to have been! and how unworthy 
to be ranked as a lover of the same pastime, which had been 
so interestingly recommended by Isaac Walton, in his Con- 
templative Man's Recreation."* 

But Isaac's contemplative man can content himself with 
impaling live worms, and jesting about the tenderness with 
which he treats them — using the worm, quoth Isaac, " as if 
you loved him." Doubtless John thought himself as good a 
man as Isaac. He poetizes, and is innocent with the best of 
them, and probably would not have hurt a dog. However, 
it must be allowed that he had less imagination than Walton, 
and was more cruel, inasmuch as he could commit a cruelty 
that was not the custom. Observe, nevertheless, that it was 
the customary cruelty which led to the new one. Why 
must these contemplative men commit any cruelty at all ? 
The writer of the article in the Censura was, if we mistake 
not, one of the kindest of human beings, and yet he could see 
nothing erroneous in torturing a worm. " A good man," 
says the Scripture, "is merciful to his beast." Therefore 
" holy Mr. Herbert" very properly helps a horse out of a 
ditch, and is the better for it all the rest of the day. Are 
we not to be merciful to fish as well as beasts, merely because 
the Scripture does not expressly state it ? Such are the 
inconsistencies of mankind, during their very acquirement of 
beneficence. 

On the other side of the corner of Chancery Lane was 
born a man of genius and benevolence, who would not have 
hurt a fly — Abraham Cowley. His father was a grocer; 
himself, one of the kindest, wisest, and truest gentlemen that 
ever graced humanity. He has been pronounced by one, 
competent to judge, to have been " if not a great poet, a 
great man." But his poetry is what every other man's 
poetry is, the flower of what was in him ; and it is at least so 
* Censura Literaria, vol. iv., p. 345. 



CHANCERY LANE. 117 

far good poetry, as it is the quintessence of amiable and deep 
reflection, not without a more festive strain, the result of his 
sociality. Pope says of him — ■ 

" Forgot his epic, nay pindaric art ; 
Yet still we love the language of his heart."* 

His prose is admirable, and his character of Cromwell a 
masterpiece of honest enmity, more creditable to both parties 
than the zealous royalist was aware. Cowley, notwithstand- 
ing the active part he took in politics, never ceased to be a 
child at heart. His mind lived in books and bowers — in the 
sequestered " places of thought ; " and he wondered and 
lamented to the last, that he had not realised the people he 
found there. His consolation should have been, that what he 
found in himself was an evidence that the people exist. 

Chancery Lane, " the most ancient of any to the west," 
having been built in the time of Henry the Third, when it 
was called New Lane, which was afterwards altered to 
Chancellor's Lane, is the greatest legal thoroughfare in 
England. It leads from the Temple, passes by Sergeants' 
Inn, Clifford's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, and the Kolls, and conducts 
to Gray's Inn. Of the world of vice and virtue, of pain and 
triumph, of learning and ignorance, truth and chicanery, of 
impudence, violence, and tranquil wisdom, that must have 
passed through this spot, the reader may judge accordingly. 
There all the great and eloquent lawyers of the metropolis 
must have been, at some time or other, from Fortescue and 
Littleton, to Coke, Ellesmere, and Erskine. Sir Thomas 
More must have been seen going down with his weighty 
aspect ; Bacon with his eye of intuition ; the coarse Thurlow ; 
and the reverend elegance of Mansfield. In Chancery Lane 
was born the celebrated Lord Strafford, who was sent to the 
block by the party he had deserted, the victim of his own 
false strength and his -master's weakness. It is a curious 
evidence of the secret manners of those times, which are so 
often contrasted with the licence of the next reign, that 
Clarendon, in speaking of some love-letters of this lord, a 
married man, which transpired during his trial, calls them 
" things of levity." What would he have said had he found 
any love letters between Lady Carlisle and Pym ? Of 
Southampton Buildings, on the site of which lived Shak- 
speare's friend, Lord Southampton, we shall speak imme- 
* Imitations of Horace, Ep. i. ? book ii. 



118 sergeants' inn. 

diately; and we snail notice Lincoln's Inn when we come to 
the Western portion of Holborn. But we may here observe, 
that on the wall of the Inn, which is in Chancery Lane, Ben 
Jonson is said to have worked, at the time he was compelled 
to assist his father-in-law at his trade of bricklaying. In the 
intervals of his trowel, he is said to have handled his Horace 
and Virgil. It is only a tradition, which Fuller has handed 
down to us in his Worthies ; but tradition is valuable when 
it helps to make such a flower grow upon an old wall. 

Sergeants' Inn, the first leading out of Chancery Lane, 
near Fleet Street, has been what its name implies for many 
generations. It was occasionally occupied by the Sergeants 
as early as the time of Henry the Fourth, when it was called 
Farringdon's Inn, though they have never, we believe, held 
possession of the place but under tenure to the bishops of 
Ely, or their lessees. Pennant counfounds this inn with 
another of the same name, now no longer devoted to the same 
purpose, in Fleet Street.* Sergeants' Inn in Fleet Street was 
reduced to ruins in the great fire, but was soon after rebuilt 
in a much more uniform style than before. It continued 
after this to be occupied by the lawyers in 1730, when the 
whole was taken down, and the present court erected. The 
office of the Amicable Annuitant Society, on the east side of 
the court, occupies the site of the ancient hall and chapel. 
All the judges, as having been Sergeants-at-law before their 
elevation to the bench, have still chambers in the inn in 
Chancery Lane. The windows of this house are filled with 
the armorial bearings of the members, who, when they are 
knighted, are emphatically equites aurati (knights made 
golden), at least as far as rings are concerned, for they give 
rings on the occasion, with mottoes expressive of their senti- 
ments upon law and justice. As to the equites, learned 
"knights" or horsemen (till "knight" be restored to its 
original meaning — servant) will never be anything but an 
anomaly, especially since the brethren no longer even ride to 
the Hall as they used. The arms of the body of Sergeants 
are a golden shield with an ibis upon it; or, to speak 
scientifically, "Or, an Ibis proper;" to which Mr. Jekyll 
might have added, for motto, " In medio tutissimus." The 
same learned punster made an epigram upon the oratory and 
scarlet robes of his brethren, which may be here repeated 

* Pennant, ut supra, p. 1 72. 



Clifford's inn. 119 

without offence, as the Sergeants have had among them some 
of the best as well as most tiresome of speakers : 

" The Sergeants are a grateful race ; 
Their dress and language show it ; 
Their purple robes from Tyre we trace, 
Their arguments go to it." 

One of the customs which used to be observed so late as 
the reign of Charles I. in the creation of sergeants, was for 
the new dignitary to go in procession to St. Paul's, and there 
to choose his pillar, as it was expressed. This ceremony is 
supposed to have originated in the ancient practice of the 
lawyers taking each his station at one of the pillars in the 
cathedral, and there waiting for clients. The legal sage stood, 
it is said, with pen in hand, and dexterously noted down the 
particulars of every man's case on his knee. 

Clifford's Inn, leading out of Sergeants' Inn into Fleet 
Street and Fetter Lane, is so called from the noble family 
of De Clifford, who granted it to the students-at-law in the 
reign of Edward III. The word inn (Saxon, chamber), 
though now applied only to law places, and the better sort 
of public-houses in which travellers are entertained, formerly 
signified a great house, mansion, or family palace. So 
Lincoln's Inn, the mansion of the Earls of Lincoln; Gray's 
Inn, of the Lords Gray, &c. The French still use the word 
hotel in the same sense. Inn once made as splendid a figure 
in our poetry, as the palaces of Milton : 

" Now whenas Phoebus, with his fiery waine, 
Unto his inne began to draw apace ;"* 

says Spenser ; and his disciple Browne after him : 
" Now had the glorious sun tane up his inne."f 
There are three things to notice in Clifford's Inn : its little 
bit of turf and trees ; its quiet ; and its having been the 
residence of Robert Pultock, author of the curious narrative 
Peter Wilkins, with its Flying Women. Who he was, is not 
known ; probably a barrister without practice ; but he wrote 
an amiable and interesting book. As to the sudden and 
pleasant quiet in this little inn, it is curious to consider what 
a small remove from the street produces it. But even in the 
back room of a shop in the main street, the sound of the carts 
and carriages becomes wonderfully deadened to the ear ; and 
a remove, like Clifford's Inn, makes it remote or nothing. 

* Faerie Queen, book vi., canto iii. 

f Britannia's Pastorals, book i., song iii. 



120 ST. dunstan's in the west. 

The garden of Clifford's Inn forms part of the area of the 
Rolls, so called from the records kept there, in rolls of parch- 
ment. It is said to have been the house of an eminent Jew, 
forfeited to the crown ; that is to say, it was most probably 
taken from him, with all that it contained, by Henry III., 
who made it a house for converts from the owner's religion. 
These converted Jews, most likely none of the best of their 
race (for board and lodging are not arguments to the scrupu- 
lous), appear to haye been so neglected, that the number of 
them soon came to nothing, and Edward III. gave the place to 
the Court of Chancery to keep its records in. There is a fine 
monument in the chapel to a Dr. Young, one of the Masters, 
which, according to Vertue, was executed by Torregiano, 
who built the splendid tomb in Henry VII.'s Chapel. Sir 
John Trevor, infamous for bribery and corruption, also lies 
here. " Wisely," says Pennant, " his epitaph is thus con- 
fined : < Sir J. T. M.R. 1717.' " Some other Masters," he 
adds, " rest within the walls ; among them Sir John Strange, 
but without the quibbling line, 

1 Here lies an honest lawyer, that is Strange.' " 
Another Master of the Eolls, who did honour to the profes- 
sion, was Sir Joseph Jekyll, recorded by Pope as an 

. " odd old Whig, 
Who never changed his principles or wig." 

When Jekyll came into the office, many of the houses were 
rebuilt, and to the expense of ten of them he added, out of his 
own purse, as much as 350Z. each house ; observing, that 
" he would have them built as strong and as well as if they 
were his own inheritance."* The Master of the Rolls is a 
great law dignitary, a sort of under -judge in Chancery, 
presiding in a court by himself, though his most ostensible 
office is to take care of the records in question. He has a 
house and garden on the spot, the latter secluded from public 
view. The house, however, has not been used as a residence 
by the present holder of the office or his predecessor. 

Between Chancery and Fetter Lane is the new church of 
St. Dunstan's in the West — a great improvement upon the old 
one, though a little too plain below for the handsome fret- 
work of its steeple. The old building was eminent for the 
two wooden figures of wild men, who, with a gentleness not- 
to be expected of them, struck the hour with a little tap of 
* Londinium Recfivivum, vol. ii., p. 279, 



FETTER LANE. 121 

their clubs. At the same time they moved vheir arms and 
heads, with a like avoidance of superfluous action. These 
figures were put up in the time of Charles II., and were 
thought not to confer much honour on the passengers who 
stood " gaping'' to see them strike. But the passengers 
might surely be as alive to the puerility as any one else. An 
absurdity is not the least attractive thing in this world. They 
who objected to the gapers, -probably admired more things 
than they laughed at. It must be remembered also, that 
when the images were set up, mechanical contrivances were 
much rarer than they are now. Two centuries ago, St. Dun- 
stan's Churchyard, as it was called, being the portion of Fleet 
Street in front of the church, was famous for its booksellers' 
shops. The church escaped the great fire, which stopped 
within three houses of it, and consequently was one of the 
most ancient sacred edifices in London. It was supposed to 
have been built about the end of the fourteenth century, but 
had undergone extensive repairs. Besides the clock with the 
figures, it was adorned by a statue of Queen Elizabeth, which 
stood in a niche over the east end, and had been transferred 
thither about the middle of last century from the west side 
of old Ludgate, which was then removed. 

The only repute of Fetter Lane in the present days is, or 
was, for sausages. But at one time it is said to have had the 
honour of Dryden's presence. The famous Praise God Bare- 
bones also, it seems, lived here, in a house for which he paid 
forty pounds a year, as he stated in his examination on a 
trial in the reign of Charles II.* He paid the above rent, he 
says "except during the war:" that is, we suppose, during 
the confusion of the contest between the King and the Par- 
liament, when probably this worthy contrived to live rent 
free. In this neighbourhood also dwelt the infamous Elizabeth 
Brownrigg, who was executed in 1767 for the murder of one 
of her apprentices. Her house, with the cellar in which she 
used to confine her starved and tortured victims, and from the 
grating of which their cries of distress were heard, was one 
of those on the east side of the lane, looking into the long and 
narrow alley behind, called Flower-de-Luce Court. It was 
some years ago in the occupation of a fishing-tackle maker. 

Johnson once lived in Fetter Lane, but the circumstances 
of his abode there have not transpired. We now, however, 
come to a cluster of his residences in Fleet Street, of which 
* See Malcolm's Londinium Eedivivum, vol. iii., 453, 



122 ANECDOTE OF JOHNSON— HIS RESIDENCES. 

place he is certainly the great presiding spirit, the Genius loci. 
He was conversant for the greater part of his life with this 
street, was fond of it, frequented its Mitre Tavern above any 
other in London, and has identified its name and places with 
the best things he ever said and did. It was in Fleet Street, 
we believe, that he took the poor girl tip in his arms, put her 
to bed in his own house, and restored her to health and her 
friends ; an action sufficient to redeem a million of the aspe- 
rities of temper occasioned by disease, and to stamp him, in 
spite of his bigotry, a good Christian. Here, at all events, he 
walked and talked, and shouldered wondering porters out of 
the way, and mourned, and philosophised, and was "a good- 
natured fellow" (as he called himself), and roared with peals 
of laughter till midnight echoed to his roar. 

" We walked in the evening," says Boswell, " in Greenwich Park. 
He asked me, I suppose by way of trying my disposition, 'Is not this 
very fine ? ' Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, 
and being more delighted with the busy hum of men, I answered, 
' Yes, sir ; but not equal to Fleet Street.' Johnson. 'You are right, 
sir/"* 

Boswell vindicates the tastes here expressed by the example 
of a " very fashionable baronet," who, on his attention being 
called to the fragrance of a May evening in the country, 
observed, " This may be very well, but I prefer the smell of 
a flambeau at the playhouse." The baronet here alluded to 
was Sir Michael le Fleming, who, by way of comment on his 
indifference to fresh air, died of an apoplectic fit while con- 
versing with Lord Howick (the late Earl Grey), at the 
Admiralty.")* However, Johnson's ipse dixit was enough. He 
wanted neither Boswell's vindication, nor any other. He was 
melancholy, and glad to be taken from his thoughts; and 
London furnished him with an endless flow of society. 

Johnson's abodes in Fleet Street were in the following 
order: — First, in Fetter Lane, then in Boswell Court, then in 
Gough Square, in the Inner Temple Lane, in Johnson's Court, 
and finally, and for the longest period, in Bolt Court, where 
he died. His mode of life, during a considerable portion of 
his residence in these places, is described in a communication 
to Boswell by the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, assistant preacher at 
the Temple, who was intimate with Johnson for many years, 
and who spoke of his memory with affection. 

* Boswell, ut supra, vol. i., p. 441. 

f Malone, on the passage in Boswell, ibid, 

v 



ANECDOTE OF JOHNSON. 123 

"About twelve o'clock," says the doctor, "I commonly visited him, 
and found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which he drank 
very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning visitors, 
chiefly men of letters ; Ha wkes worth, Goldsmith, Murphy, Langton, 
Steevens, Beauclerk, &c, &c, and sometimes learned ladies ; par- 
ticularly, I remember, a French lady of wit and fashion doing him 
the honour of a visit. He seemed to me to be considered as a kind of 
public oracle, whom everybody thought they had a right to visit and 
consult; and, doubtless, they were well rewarded. I never could 
discover how he found time for his compositions. He declaimed all 
the morning, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly 
staid late, and then drank his tea at some friend's house, over which 
he loitered a great while, but seldom took supper. I fancy he must 
have read and wrote chiefly in the night; for I can scarcely recollect 
that he ever refused going with me to a tavern, and he often went to 
Eanelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent recreation. 

" He frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor, who 
watched him between his house and the tavern where he dined. He 
walked the streets at all hours, and said he was never robbed, for the 
rogues knew he had little money, nor had the appearance of having 
much. 

"Though the most accessible and communicative man alive, yet 
when he suspected that he was invited to be exhibited, he constantly 
spurned the invitation. 

" Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was 
present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they 
were inclined. ' Come (said he), you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell 
and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject ; which they 
did, and after dinner he took one of them on his knees, and fondled 
them for half en hour together."* 

This anecdote is exquisite. It shows, that however impa- 
tient he was of having his own superstitions canvassed, he 
was loth to see them inflicted on others. He is here a harm- 
less Falstaff, with two innocent damsels on his knees, in lieu 
of Mesdames Ford and Page. 

In Gough Square, Johnson wrote part of his Dictionary. 
He had written the Rambler and taken his high stand with 
the public before. " At this time," says Barber, his servant, 
" he had little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. 
Shiels when in distress." (Shiels was one of his amanuenses 
in the dictionary.) His friends and visitors in Gough Square 
are a good specimen of what they always were — a miscellany 
creditable to the largeness of his humanity. There was Cave, 
Dr. Hawkesworth, Miss Carter, Mrs. Macauley (two ladies 
who must have looked strangely at one another), Mr. (after- 
wards Sir Joshua) Reynolds, Langton, Mis. Williams (a poor 
poetess whom he maintained in his house), Mr. Levett (an 

* Boswell, vol. ii., p. 117. 



124 JOHNSON AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 

apothecary on the same footing), Garrick, Lord Orrery, Lord 
Southwell, and Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow chandler on 
Snow-hill — " not in the learned way," said Mr. Barber, "but 
a worthy good woman." With all his respect for rank, 
which doubtless he regarded as a special dispensation of 
Providence, his friend Beauclerk's notwithstanding, * Johnson 
never lost sight of the dignity of goodness. He did not, 
however, confine his attentions to those who were noble or 
amiable ; though we are to suppose, that everybody with 
whom he chose to be conversant had some good quality or 
other ; unless, indeed, he patronised them as the Duke of 
Montague did his ugly dogs, because nobody would if he did 
not. The great secret, no doubt, was, that he was glad of the 
company of any of his fellow-creatures who would bear and 
forbear with him, and for whose tempers he did not care as 
much as he did for their welfare. And he was giving alms ; 
which was a catholic part of religion, in the proper sense of 
the word. 

" He nursed," says Mrs. Thrale, in her superfluous style, " whole 
nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and 
the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence his little 
income could secure them; and commonly spending the middle of the 
week at our house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street upon 
a settled allowance ; but returned to them every Saturday to give 
them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us 
on the Monday night, treating them with the same, or perhaps more, 
ceremonious civility, than he would have done by as many people of 
fashion, making the Holy Scripture thus the rule of his conduct, and 
only expecting salvation as he was able to obey its precepts." f 

Johnson's female inmates were not like the romantic ones 
of Richardson. 

"We surely cannot but admire," says Bos well, "the benevolent 
exertions of this great and good man, especially when we consider 
how grievously he was afflicted with bad health, and how uncom- 
fortable his home was made by the perpetual jarring of those whom 
he charitably accommodated under his roof. He has sometimes suf- 
fered me to talk jocularly of his group of females, and call them his 
seraglio. He thus mentions them, together with honest Levitt, in one 
of his letters to Mrs. Thrale : ' Williams hates everybody ; Levett 
hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams ; Desmoulins hates 
them both ; Poll loves none of them.' " f 

Of his residence in Inner Temple Lane we have spoken 

* Beauclerk, of the St. Alban's family, was a descendant of Charles 
II., whom he resembled in face and complexion, for which Johnson 
by no means liked him the less. 

f Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, &c. Allman, 1822, p. 69. 

% Boswell, vol. iii., p. 398. 



Johnson's residences. 125 

before. He lived there six or seven years, and then removed 
to Johnson's Court, No. 7, where he resided for ten. Johnson's 
Court is in the neighbourhood of Gough Square. It was 
during this period that he accompanied his friend Boswell to 
Scotland, where he sometimes humorously styled himself 
" Johnson of that ilk" (that same, or Johnson of Johnson), in 
imitation of the local designations of the Scottish chiefs. In 




Johnson's house in bolt court. 



1776, in his sixty-seventh year, still adhering to the neigh- 
bourhood, he removed into Bolt Court, No. 8, where he died 
eight years after, on the 13th December, 1784. In Bolt 
Court he had a garden, and perhaps in Johnson's Court and 



126 ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON. 

Gough Square : which we mention to show how tranquil and 
removed these places were, and convenient for a student who 
wished, nevertheless, to have the bustle of London at hand. 
Maitland (one of the compilers upon Stow), who published 
his history of London in 1739, describes Johnson and Bolt 
Courts as having " good houses, well inhabited ;" and Gough 
Square he calls fashionable.* 

Johnson was probably in every tavern and coffee-house in 
Fleet Street. There is one which has taken his name, being 
styled, par excellence, ''Doctor Johnson's Coffee-house." But 
the house he most frequented was the Mitre tavern, on the 
other side of the street, in a passage leading to the Temple. 
It was here, as we have seen, that he took his two innocent 
theologians, and paternally dandled them out of their mis- 
givings on his knee. The same place was the first of the 
kind in which Boswell met him. " We had a good supper," 
says the happy biographer, " and port wine, of which he then 
sometimes drank a bottle." (At intervals he abstained from 
all fermented liquors for a long time.) " The orthodox, 
high-church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the 
celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power and pre- 
cision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding 
myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of 
sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I 
had before experienced." "j" They sat till between one and 
two in the morning. He told Boswell at that period that 
" he generally went abroad at about four in the afternoon, 
and seldom came home till two in the morning. I took the 
liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and 
not to make more use of his great talents. He owned it was 
a bad habit." 

The next time, Goldsmith was with them, when Johnson 
made a remark which comes home to everybody, namely, 
that granting knowledge in some cases to produce unhappiness, 
" knowledge per se was an object which every one would 
wish to attain, though, perhaps, he might not take the trouble 
necessary for attaining it." One of his most curious remarks 
followed, occasioned by the mention of Campbell, the author 

* Johnson's Court runs into Gough Square, " a place lately built 
■with very handsome houses, and well inhabited by persons of fashion." 
— Maitland's History and Survey of London, by Entick, folio, 175G, 
p. 961. 

f Boswell, vol. i., p. 384. 



Johnson's opinion of taverns. 127 

of the Hermippus Eedivivus, on which Boswell makes a no 
less curious comment. " Campbell," said Johnson, " is a 
good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the 
inside of a church for many years ; but he never passes a 
church without pulling off his hat. This shows that he has 
good principles." On which, says Boswell in a note, " I am 
inclined to think he was misinformed as to this circumstance. 
I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. 
For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from 
public worship, /cannot."* 

It was at their next sitting in this house, at which the 
Rev. Dr. Ogilvie, a Scotch writer, was present, that Johnson 
made his famous joke, in answer to that gentleman's remark, 
that Scotland has a great many "noble wild prospects." 
Johnson. " I believe, sir, you have a great many. Norway, 
too, has noble, wild prospects ; and Lapland is remarkable for 
prodigious, noble, wild prospects. But, sir, let me tell you, 
the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high 
road that leads him to England!" "This unexpected and 
pointed sally," says Boswell, " produced a roar of applause. 
After all, however" (he adds), "those who admire the rude 
grandeur of nature, cannot deny it to Caledonia." f 

Johnson had the highest opinion of a tavern, as a place in 
which a man might be comfortable, if he could anywhere. 
Indeed, he said that the man who could not enjoy himself in 
a tavern, could be comfortable nowhere. This, however, is 
not to be taken to the letter. Extremes meet ; and Johnson's 
uneasiness of temper led him into the gayer necessities of 
Falstaff. However, it is assuredly no honour to a man, not 
to be able to " take his ease at his inn." " There is no private 
house," said Johnson, talking on this subject, "in which 
people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. 
Let there be ever so great a plenty of good things, ever so 
much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire 
that everybody should be easy, in the nature of things it 
cannot be : there must always be some degree of care and 
anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his 
guests ; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him ; and 
no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely com- 
mand what is in another man's house as if it were his own. 
Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. 
You are sure you are welcome ; and the more noise you 
* Boswell, vol. i., p. 400. f Id., p. 408. 



128 ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON. 

make, the more trouble you give, the more good things yoti 
call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you 
with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the 
prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. 
No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by 
man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good 
tavern or inn." He then repeated with great emotion Shen- 
stone's lines : — 

" Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, 
Where'er his stages may have been, 
May sigh, to think he still has found 
The warmest welcome at an inn." * 

11 Sir John Hawkins," says Boswell in a note on this pas- 
sage, " has preserved very few memorabilia of Johnson." 
There is, however, to be found in his bulky tome, a very 
excellent one upon this subject. " In contradiction to those 
who, having a wife and children, prefer domestic enjoyments 
to those which a'tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that 
a tavern chair ivas the throne of human felicity. ' As soon ' 
(said he), c as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an 
oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude : when I am 
seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obse- 
quious to my call, anxious to know and ready to supply my 
wants : wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to 
free conversation, and an interchange of discourse with those 
whom I most love ; I dogmatise, and am contradicted ; and 
in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find delight.' " 

The following anecdote is highly to Johnson's credit, and 
equally worthy of every one's attention. " Johnson was 
known to be so rigidly attentive to the truth," says Boswell, 
" that even in his common conversation the slightest circum- 
stance was mentioned with exact precision. The knowledge 
of his having such a principle and habit made his friends 
have a perfect reliance on the truth of everything that he 
told, however it might have been doubted if told by many 
others. As an instance of this I may mention an odd inci- 
dent, which he related as having happened to him one night 
in Fleet Street. ' A gentlewoman' (said he) ' begged I would 
give her my arm to assist her in crossing the street, which I 
accordingly did ; upon which she offered me a shilling, sup- 
posing me to be the watchman. I perceived that she was 
somewhat in liquor.' This, if told by most people, would 
* Boswell, vol. ii., p. 469, 



ANECDOTES OF JOHNSON. 129 

have been thought an invention ; when told by Johnson, it 
was believed by his friends, as much as if they had seen what 
passed." * 

The gentlewoman, however, might have taken him for the 
watchman without being in liquor, if she had no eye to discern 
a great man through his uncouthness. Davies, the bookseller, 
said, that he " laughed like a rhinoceros." It may be added 
he walked like a whale ; for it was rolling rather than walking. 
"I met him in Fleet Street," says Boswell, "walking, or rather, 
indeed, moving along; for his peculiar march is thus described 
in a very just and picturesque manner, in a short life of him 
published very soon after his death : — ' When he walked the 
streets, what with the constant roll of his head, and the con- 
comitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by 
that motion independent of his feet.' That he was often much 
stared at," continues Boswell, " while he advanced in this 
manner, may be easily believed ; but it was not safe to make 
sport of one so robust as he was. Mr. Langton saw him one 
day, in a fit of absence, by a sudden start, drive the load off a 
porter's back, and walk forwards briskly, without being con- 
scious of what he had done. The porter was very angry, but 
stood still, and eyed the huge figure with much earnestness, 
till he was satisfied that his wisest course was to be satisfied 
and take up his burden again." f 

There is another remark on Fleet Street and its superiority 
to the country, which must not be passed over. Boswell, not 
having Johnson's reasons for wanting society, was a little over- 
weening and gratuitous on this subject; and on such occasions 
the doctor would give him a knock. " It was a delightful 
day," says the biographer ; " as we walked to St. Clement's 
Church, I again remarked that Fleet Street was the most 
cheerful scene in the world ; ' Fleet Street,' said I, ' is in my 
mind more delightful than Teinpe.' Johnson. — ' Ay, sir, but 
let it be compared with Mull.' "J 

The progress of knowledge, even since Johnson's time, has 
enabled us to say, without presumption, that we differ with 
this extraordinary person on many important points, without 
ceasing to have the highest regard for his character. His 
faults were the result of temperament ; perhaps his good 
qualities and his powers of reflection were, in some measure, 
so too ; but this must be the case with all men. Intellect 

* Boswell, vol. ii., p. 455. f Ibid. vol. iv., p. 77. 

% Ibid. vol. iii., p. 327. 



130 CRANE COURT. 

and beneficence, from whatever causes, will always command 
respect ; and we may gladly compound, for their sakes, with 
foibles which belong to the common chances of humanity. If 
Johnson has added nothing very new to the general stock, he 
has contributed (especially by the help of his biographer) a 
great deal that is striking and entertaining. He was an 
admirable critic, if not of the highest things, yet of such as 
could be determined by the exercise of a masculine good 
sense; and one thing he did, perhaps beyond any man in 
England, before or since — he advanced, by the powers of his 
conversation, the strictness of his veracity, and the respect he 
exacted towards his presence, what may be called the personal 
dignity of literature. The consequence has been, not exactly 
what he expected, but certainly what the great interests of 
knowledge require ; and Johnson has assisted men, with whom 
he little thought of co-operating, in setting the claims of truth 
and beneficence above all others. 

East from Fetter Lane, on the same side of the street, is 
Crane Court — the principal house in w T hich, facing the entry, 
was that in which the Eoyal Society used to meet, and where 
they kept their museum and library before they removed to 
their late apartments in Somerset House. The society met in 
Crane Court up to a period late enough to allow us to present 
to our imaginations Boyle and his contemporaries prosecuting 
their eager inquiries and curious experiments in the early 
dawn of physical science, and afterwards Newton presiding 
in the noontide glory of the light w r hich he had shed over 
rature. 



131 

CHAPTER IV. 
THE STEAND. 

Ancient State of the Strand — Butcher Row — Death of Lee, the 
dramatic Poet — Johnson at anEating-House — Essex Street — House 
and History of the favourite Earl of Essex — Spenser's Visit there — 
Essex, General of the Parliament — Essex Head Club — Devereux 
Court — Grecian Coffee-House — Twining, the accomplished Scholar 
— St. Clement Danes — Clement's Inn — Ealstaff and Shallow — 
Norfolk, Arundel, Surrey, and Howard Streets — Norfolk House — 
Essex's Ring and the Countess of Nottingham — William Penn — 
Birch — Dr. Brocklesby — Congreve, and his Will — Voltaire's Visit 
to him — Mrs. Bracegirdle — Tragical End of Mountford the Player — 
Ancient Cross — Maypole — New Church of St. Mary-le-Strand — Old 
Somerset House — Henrietta Maria and her Erench Household — 
Waller's Mishap at Somerset Stairs — New Somerset House — Eoyal 
Society, Antiquarian Society, and Royal Academy — Death of 
Dr. King — Exeter Street — Johnson's first Lodging in London — Art 
of living in London — Catherine Street — Unfortunate Women — 
Wimbledon House — Lyceum and Beef-steak Club — Exeter Change 
— Bed and Baltimore — The Savoy — Anecdotes of the Duchess of 
Albemarle — Beaufort Buildings — Lillie, the Perfumer — Aaron Hill 
— Fielding — Southampton Street — Cecil and Salisbury Streets — 
Durham House — Raleigh — Pennant on the Word Place or Palace — 
New Exchange — Don Pantaleon Sa — The White Milliner — Adelphi 
— Garrick and his Wife — Beauclerc — Society of Arts, and Mr. Barry 
— Bedford Street — George, Villiers, and Buckingham Streets — York 
House and Buildings — Squabble between the Spanish and French 
Ambassadors — Hungerford Market — Craven Street — Franklin — 
Northumberland House — Duplicity of Henry, Earl of Northampton 
— Violence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury — Percy, Bishop ot 
Dromore — Pleasant mistake of Goldsmith. 

N going through Fleet Street and the Strand, 
we seldom think that the one is named 
after a rivulet, now running under ground, 
and the other from its being on the banks 
of the river Thames. As little do mosfc 
of us fancy that there was once a line of 
noblemen's houses on the one side, and 
that, at the same time, all beyond the 
other side, to Hampstead or Highgate, was open country, with 
the little hamlet of St. Giles's in a copse. So late as the 
reign of Henry VIII. we have a print containing the vill a 
of Charing. Citizens used to take an evening stroll to the 
well now in St. Clement's Inn. 

In the reign of Edward III, the Strand was an open country 




132 THE STRAND. 

road, with a mansion here and there, on the banks of the river 
Thames, most probably a castle or stronghold. In this state 
it no doubt remained during the greater part of the York and 
Lancaster period. From Henry VII. 's time the castles most 
likely began to be exchanged for mansions of a more peaceful 
character. These gradually increased ; and in the reign of 
Edward VI. the Strand consisted, on the south side, of a line 
of mansions with garden walls ; and on the north, of a single 
row of houses, behind which all was field. The reader is to 
imagine wall all the way from Temple Bar to Whitehall, on 
his left hand, like that of Kew Palace, or a succession of 
Burlington Gardens ; while the line of humbler habitations 
stood on the other side, like a row of servants in waiting. 

As wealth increased, not only the importance of rank 
diminished, and the nobles were more content to recollect 
James's advice of living in the country (where, he said, they 
looked like ships in a river, instead of ships at sea), but the 
value of ground about London, especially on the river side, 
was so much augmented, that the proprietors of these princely 
mansions were not unwilling to turn the premises into money. 
The civil wars had given another jar to the stability of their 
abodes in the metropolis ; and in Charles the Second's time 
the great houses finally gave way, and were exchanged for 
streets and wharfs. An agreeable poet of the last century lets 
us know that he used to think of this great change in going 
up the Strand. 

" Come, Fortescue, sincere, experienc'd friend, 
Thy briefs, thy deeds, and e'en thy fees suspend ; 
Come, let us leave the Temple's silent walls ; 
Me, business to my distant lodging calls ; 
Through the long Strand togethe-r let us stray ; 
With thee conversing, I forget the way. 
Behold that narrow street which steep descends, 
Whose building to the slimy shore extends ; 
Here Arundel's fam'd structure rear'd its fame : 
The street alone retains the empty name. 
Where Titian's glowing paint the canvass warmed, 
And Kaphael's fair design with judgment charmed, 
Now hangs the bellman's song ; and pasted here 
The coloured prints of Overton appear. 
Where statues breathed, the works of Phidias' hands. 
A wooden pump, or lonely watch-house stands. 
There Essex's stately pile adorned the shore, 
There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers', — now no more."* 



* Gay's Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, 
book ii. 



THE STRAND. 133 

As the aspect in this quarter is so different from what it 
was, and the quarter is one of the most important in the 
metropolis, we may add what Pennant has written on the 
subject : — 

" In the year 1353, that fine street the Strand was an open high- 
way, with here and there a great man's house, with gardens to the 
water's side. In that year it was so ruinous, that Edward III., by 
an ordinance, directed a tax to be raised upon wool, leather, wine, 
and all goods carried to the staple at Westminster, from Temple Bar 
to Westminster Abbey, for the repair of the road ; and that all owners 
of houses adjacent to the highway should repair as much as lay before 
their doors. Mention is also made of a bridge to be erected near the 
royal palace at Westminster, for the conveniency of the said staple ; 
but the last probably meant no more than stairs for the landing of the 
goods, which I find sometimes went by the name of a bridge. 

" There was no continued street here till about the year 1533 ; 
before that it entirely cut off Westminster from London, and nothing 
intervened except the scattered houses, and a village, which after- 
wards gave name to the whole. St. Martin's stood literally in the 
fields. But about the year 1560 a street was formed, loosely built, for 
all the houses on the south side had great gardens to the river, were 
called by their owners' names, and in after times gave name to the 
several streets that succeeded them, pointing down to the Thames ; 
each of them had stairs for the conveniency of taking boat, of which 
many to this day bear the names of the houses. As the court was 
for centuries either at the palace at Westminister, or Whitehall, a 
boat was the customary conveyance of the great to the presence of 
their sovereign. The north side was a mere line of houses from 
Charing-cross to Temple Bar ; all beyond was country. The gardens 
which occupied part of the site of Covent Garden were bounded by 
fields, and St. Giles's was a distant country village. These are cir- 
cumstances proper to point out, to show the vast increase of our 
capital in little more than two centuries."* 

The aspect of the Strand, on emerging through Temple 
Bar, is very different from what it was forty years ago. "A 
stranger who had visited London in 1790, would on his 
return in 1804," says Mr. Malcolm, " be astonished to find a 
spacious area (with the church nearly in the centre) on the 
site of Butcher Kow, and some other passages undeserving of 
the name of streets, which were composed of those wretched 
fabrics, overhanging their foundations, the receptacles of dirt 
in every corner of their projecting stories, the bane of ancient 
London, where the plague, with all its attendant horrors, 
frowned destruction on the miserable inhabitants, reserving 
its forces for the attacks of each returning summer."j* 

The site of Butcher Eow, thus advantageously thrown 

* Pennant, ut supra, p. 139. 

f Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 397. 



134 DEATH OF LEE. 

open, is called Pickett Street, after the alderman who pro- 
jected the improvements. Unfortunately they turned out to 
be on too large a scale ; that is to say, the houses were found 
to be too large and expensive for the right side of the Strand 
in this quarter ; the tide of traffic between the city and West- 
minster flowing the other side of the way. The consequence 
is, that the houses are under-let, and that something of the old 
squalid look remains in the turning towards Clement's Inn, in 
spite of the pillared entrance. 

Butcher Eow, however squalid, contained houses worth 
eating and drinking in. Johnson frequented an eating-house 
there; and, according to Oldys, it was "in returning from 
the Bear and Harrow in Butcher Eow, through Clare Market, 
to his lodgings in Duke Street, that Lee, the dramatic poet, 
overladen with wine, fell down (on the ground, as some say — 
according to others, on a bulk), and was killed, or stifled in 
the snow. He was buried in the parish church of St. Clement 
Danes, aged about thirty -five years."* "He was a very hand- 
some as well as ingenious man," says Oldys, "but given to 
debauchery, which necessitated a milk diet. When some of 
his university comrades visited him, he fell to drinking out of 
all measure, which, flying up into his head, caused his face to 
break out into those carbuncles which were afterwards ob- 
served there^ and also touched his brain, occasioning that mad- 
ness so much lamented in so rare a genius. Tom Brown says, 
he wrote, while he was in Bedlam, a play of twenty-five acts ; 
and Mr. Bowman tells me that, going once to visit him there, 
Lee showed him a scene, ' in which,' says he, ' I have done a 
miracle for you.' 'What's that?' said Bowman. 'I have 
made you a good priest.' " 

Oldys mentions another of his mad sayings, but does not 
tell us with whom it passed. 

" I've seen an unscrewed spider spin a thought, 
And walk away upon the wings of angels !" 

" What say you to that, doctor ? " " Ah, marry, Mr. Lee, that's 
superfine indeed. The thought of a winged spider may catch sublime 
readers of poetry sooner than his web, but it will need a commentary 
in prose to render it intelligible to the vulgar." f 

Lee's madness does not appear to have been melancholy, 
otherwise these anecdotes would not bear repeating. There 
are various stories of the origin of it ; but, most probably, 

* Biographia Dramatic a, from Oldys's MS. Notes on Langbaine. 
f Censura Literaria, vol. i., p. 176. 



Clifton's eating-house. 135 

he had an over-sanguine constitution, which he exasperated 
by intemperance. Though he died so young, the author of 
A Satyr on the Poets gives us to understand that he was cor- 
pulent. 

" Pembroke loved tragedy, and did provide 
For the butchers' dogs, and for the whole Bank-side : 
The bear was fed ; but dedicating Lee 
Was thought to have a greater paunch than he."* 

This Pembroke, who loved a bear-garden, was the sevent?* 
earl of that title. His daughter married the son of Jefferies. 
Lee, on a visit to the earl at Wilton, is said to have drunk so 
hard, that "the butler feared he would empty the cellar." 
The madness of Lee is almost visible in his swelling and over- 
laden dramas; in which, however, there is a good deal of true 
poetic fire, and a vein of tenderness that makes us heartily 
pity the author. 

The social Boswell, in speaking of Johnson's eating-house 
in Butcher Row, does not approve of establishments of that 
sort. We shall see, by and by, that he was wrong. 

" Happening to dine," says he, " at Clifton's eating-house in 
Butcher Row, I was surprised to see Johnson come in and take his 
seat at another table. The mode of dining, or rather being fed, at 
such houses in London, is well known to many to be peculiarly 
unsocial, as there is no ordinary or united company, but each person 
has his own mess, and is under no obligation to hold any intercourse 
with any one. A liberal and full-minded man, however, who loves to 
talk, will break through tbis churlish and unsocial restraint. Johnson 
and an Irish gentleman got into a dispute concerning the cause of 
some part of mankind being black. ' Why, sir (said Johnson), it has 
been accounted for in three ways : either by supposing that they are 
the posterity of Ham, who was cursed ; or that God at first created 
two kinds of men, one black and another white ; or that, by the heat 
of the sun, the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This 
matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never 
been brought to any certain issue.' What the Irishman said is totally 
obliterated from my mind ; but I remember that he became very warm 
and intemperate in his expressions ; upon which Johnson rose, and 
quietly walked away. When lie had retired, his antagonist took his 
revenge, as he thought, by saying, ' He has a most ungainly figure, 
and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius.'" * 

The ungainly figure might have been pardoned by the 
Irishman ; who, we suppose, was equally fiery and elegant. 
As to Johnson's pompous manner, the most excusable part of 
it originated, doubtless, in his having decided opinions. The 
rest may have been an instinct of self-defence, arising from 

* State Poems, vol. ii., p. 143, 
f Boswell, vol. i., p. 383. 



136 ESSEX HOUSE. 

the "ungainly figure," not without a sense of the dignity of 
his calling. He certainly lost nothing by it, upon the whole. 
At all events, one is willing to think the best of what was 
accompanied by so much excellence. Affectation it was not ; 
for nobody despised pretension of any kind more than he did. 
Johnson was a sort of born bishop in his way, with high 
judgments and cathedral notions lording it in his mind ; and 
ex cathedra he accordingly spoke. 

In Butcher Row, one day, Johnson met, in advanced life, a 
fellow-collegian, of the name of Edwards, whom he had not 
seen since they were at the university. Edwards annoyed 
him by talking of their age. "Don't let us discourage one 
another," said Johnson. It was this Edwards, a dull but good 
man, who made that naive remark, which was pronounced by 
Burke and others to be an excellent trait of character: — "You 
are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson," said he : "I have tried in 
my time to be a philosopher ; but, I don't know how, cheer- 
fulness was always breaking in."* 

Before we come to St. Clement's, we arrive, on the left- 
hand side of the way, at Essex Street ; a spot once famous 
for the residence of the favourite Earl of Essex. We have 
mentioned an Outer Temple, which originally formed a com- 
panion to the Inner and Middle Temples, the whole consti- 
tuting the tenements of the knights. This Outer Temple 
stretched beyond Temple Bar into the ground now occupied 
by Essex Street and Devereux Court; and after being pos- 
sessed (Dugdale supposes) by the Prior and Canons of the 
Holy Sepulchre, was transferred by them, in the time of 
Edward III., to the Bishops of Exeter, who occupied it till 
the reign of Henry VI,, and called it Exeter House. Sir 
William Paget (afterwards Lord Paget) then had it, and did 
" re-edify the same," calling it Paget Place. After this it 
was occupied by the Duke of Norfolk, who was executed for 
his dealings with Mary, Queen of Scots ; then by Dudley, 
Earl of Leicester, the favourite, who called it Leicester House, 
and bequeathed it to his " son, Sir Robert ;" and then by the 
other favourite, Leicester's son-in-law, Essex, from whom it 
retained the name of Essex House. It was occasionally 
tenanted by men of rank till some time after the Restoration, 
when it was pulled down, and the site converted into the pre- 
sent street and court. The only remnant of it supposed to 
exist is the present Unitarian Chapel, which, before it became 
* Bos well, vol. iii., p. 331. 



earl oe ess£X. 137 

such, was called Essex House, and latterly contained an 
auction room.* 

The repose enjoyed in this precinct since the Restoration 
has been like silence after a succession of storms, for the 
house was of a turbulent reputation. The first bishop who 
had it after the Templars, being a favourite of Edward II., 
was seized by the mob, hurried to Cheapside, where they 
beheaded him, and then carried back a corpse, and buried 
in a heap of sand at his door. Lord Paget got into trouble, 
together with his friend the Duke of Somerset, who was 
accused of intending to assassinate Northumberland and others 
at this house. Norfolk possessed it while he formed his 
designs on Mary, Queen of Scots, for which he was brought 
to the scaffold ; Leicester was always having some ill design 
or other — perhaps poisoned a visitor or so occasionally (for 
he is said to have thought nothing of that gentle expediency) ; 
and Essex made the house famous by standing a siege in it 
against the troops of his mistress. The siege was not long, 
nor any of his actions in the business very wise, though he 
was a man of an exalted nature. Essex got into his troubles 
partly from heat and ambition, partly from the inferior and 
more cunning nature of some of his rivals at court. There is 
no doubt that all these causes, together with his confidence in 
Elizabeth's inability to proceed to extremities, conspired to 
lead him into rebellion. His first offence that we hear of, 
next to a general petulance of manner, which the Queen's own 
mixture of fondness and petulance was calculated enough to 
provoke, was a quarrel with some young lords for her favour ; 
the second, his joining the expedition to Cadiz without leave ; 
and the third, his marriage with the daughter of Sir Francis 
Walsingham : for Elizabeth never thought it proper that her 
favourites should be married to any thing but her " fair 
idea." 

His next dispute with her, which was on the subject of an 
assistant in the affairs of Ireland, to which he was going as 

* Dugdale's Antiquities of Westminster. Heraldic MS. in the 
Museum, quoted in Londinium Kedivivum (vol. ii., p. 282). Brydges's 
Collins's Peerage. Belsham's Life of Lindsey. We have been thus 
minute in tracing the occupancies of this house, from the interest 
excited by some of the members connected with it. Pennant says, 
upon the authority of the Sydney Papers, that Leicester bequeathed it 
to his son-in-law, which appears probable, since the latter possessed 
it. Perhaps the herald was confused by the name of Robert, which 
belonged both to son and son-in-law. 



138 EARL OF ESSEX. 

lord deputy, terminated in the singular catastrophe of his 
receiving from her a box on the ear, with the encouraging 
addition of bidding him " Go, and be hanged." It is said to 
have been occasioned by his turning his back upon her. He 
clapped his hand to his sword, and swore he would not have 
put up with such an insult from her father. His fall is 
generally dated from this circumstance, and it is thought he 
never forgave it. But surely this is not a correct judgment : 
for the blow which might have been intolerable from the hand 
of a king, implied, in its very extravagance, something not 
without flattery and self-abasement from that of a princess. 
It was as if Elizabeth had put herself into the situation 
of a termagant wife. The quarrel preceded the violence. 
Essex went to Ireland against the rebels, but apparently with 
great unwillingness, calling it, in a letter to the Queen, the 
" cursedest of all islands," and insinuating that the best thing 
that could happen both to please her and himself was the loss 
of his life in battle. The conclusion of this letter is a remark- 
able instance of the mixture of romance with real life in those 
days. It is in verse, terminating with the following pastoral 
sentiment. Essex wishes he could live like a hermit, " in 
some unhaunted desert most obscure" — 

" Erom all society, from love and hate 

Of worldly folk ; then should he sleep secure, 
Then wake again, and yield God every praise, 

Content with hips and hawes, and bramble-berry ; 
In contemplation parting out his days, 

And change of holy thoughts to make him merry. 
Who when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, 

Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush. 
Your Majesty's exiled servant, 

" Robert Essex." 

Think of this being a letter from a lord lieutenant of 
Ireland to his sovereign! Warton says, from the evidence of 
some sonnets preserved in the British Museum, that although 
Essex was " an ingenious and elegant writer of prose," he 
was no poet. There is an ungainliness in the lines we have 
just quoted, and he was probably too much given to action to 
be a poet ; but there is something in him that relished of 
the truth and directness of poetry, when he had to touch 
upon any actual emotion. Poetry is nothing but the volun- 
tary power to get at the inner spirit of what is felt, with 
imagination to embody it. It was supposed that Essex's 
enemies first got him into the office of lord lieutenant, and 



REBELLION OF ESSEX. 139 

then took advantage of his impatience under it to ruin him. 
He was accused of tampering with the rebels, and meditating 
his return into England with the troops under his charge ; 
with a view to which object he is said to have described his 
army as a force with which he " would make the earth to 
tremble as he went." He came over, with the passion of an 
injured man, and presented himself before the Queen, who 
gave him a tolerable reception, but afterwards confined him 
to the house of the lord keeper. It was then, according to 
his confession before his death, that he first contemplated 
violent measures against the throne, though always short of 
treason. Before his liberation, he was soured by his ineffec- 
tual attempts to renew his facility of admission to the presence 
chamber ; and he let fall an expression which his enemies 
greedily seized at, to wit, that the " Queen grew old and 
cankered, and that her mind was become as crooked as her 
carcase." This was exactly in his style, which was off-hand 
and energetic, with a gusto of truth in it. Meantime he 
began to have his friends about him more than ever, and to 
affect a necessity for it; and a summons being sent him to 
attend the council, he was driven by anger and fear to decline 
it, and to fortify himself in his house. His chief and most 
generous companion on this occasion was Henry, Earl of 
Southampton, the friend of Shakspeare. There was some 
little resistance ; and the Lord Keeper, with the Lord Chief 
Justice and the Earl of Worcester, coming to summon him 
to his allegiance, he locked them up in a room, on pretence 
of taking care of their persons, and then sallied through 
Fleet Street into the city, where he expected a rising in his 
favour ; for he was the most popular noble, perhaps, that 
England had ever seen, and the city had been disgusted by 
repeated levies on its purse, under pretence of invasions from 
Spain: though, according to Essex, Spain had never been so 
much in favour. The levies, in truth, were made against 
himself. He was disappointed : heard himself proclaimed a 
traitor by sound of trumpet in Gracechurch Street, and after 
a little more scuffling on the part of his adherents, returned 
by water from Queenhithe, and surrendered himself ; being 
partly moved, he said, by the " cries of ladies." It is clear 
that he did not know what to be at. He expected, most 
likely, every moment, that the Queen's tenderness would 
interfere, fearful of seeing her once beloved favourite in 
danger. But the Cecils and others aided her good sense in, 



140 EARL OF ESSEX. 

keeping her quiet. Essex had certainly acted in a way in* 
compatible with the duty of a subject, and such as no 
sovereign could tolerate. He was tried in Westminster Hall, 
and convicted of an intention to seize the court and the 
Tower, to surprise the Queen in her apartments, and then to 
summon a parliament for a "redress of grievances ;" which, 
he said, should give his enemies " a fair trial." Southampton 
was acquitted, no doubt from a sense that he intended nothing 
but a romantic adherence to his friend. 

How a man of Essex's understanding could give into these 
preposterous attempts, it would be difficult to conceive, if 
every day's experience did not show how powerful a succes- 
sion of little circumstances is to bring people into situations 
which themselves might have least looked for. Essex evi- 
dently expected pardon to the last. When Lord Grey's name 
was read over among the peers who were to try him, he 
smiled and jogged the elbow of Southampton, for offending 
whom Grey had been punished. He was at his ease through- 
out the trial. He said to the Attorney-General (Coke), who 
had told him in the course of his speech that he should be 
"Robert the Last" of an earldom, instead of "Robert the 
First" of a kingdom — " Well, Mr. Attorney, I thank God 
you are not my judge this day, you are so uncharitable." 

u Coke. Well, my lord, we shall prove you anon, what you are ; 
which your pride of heart, and aspiring mind, hath brought you unto. 

Essex. Ah, Mr. Attorney, lay your hand upon your heart, and 
pray to God to forgive us both."* 

And when sentence was passed, though it is not true that 
he refused to ask for mercy, for he did it after the best 
fashion of his style, " kneeling (he said) upon the very knees 
of his heart," yet he seemed to threaten Elizabeth, in a tender 
way, with his resolution to die. She left him, like a politic 
sovereign, to his fate ; but is thought never to have recovered 
it, as a friend. The romantic story of her visiting the 
Countess of Nottingham, who had kept back a ring which 
Essex sent her after his condemnation, of her shaking her on 
her deathbed, and crying out that " God might forgive, but 
she could not," is more and more credited as documents 
transpire. The ring, it is said, had been given to Essex, 
with a promise that it should serve him in need under any 
circumstances, if he did but send it. It is supposed that the 
non-appearance of it hurt the proud heart of Elizabeth, and 
* Howell's State Trials, vol. i., p. 1343. 



REMORSE OF ELIZABETH FOR DEATH OF ESSEX. 141 

finally allowed her to let him die. Yet she was a great 
sovereign, and might have suffered the law to take its course, 
with whatever sorrow. She was jealous of her reputation 
with the old and cool-headed lords about her. When the 
death, however, had taken place, she might have fancied 
otherwise. Something preyed strongly on her mind towards 
her decease, which happened within two years after his 
execution. She refused to go to bed for ten days and 
nights before her death, lying upon the carpet with cushions 
about her, and absorbed in the profoundest melancholy. To 
be sure, this may have been disease. A princess like 
Elizabeth, possessed of sovereign power, which had been 
sharply exercised on some doubtful occasions, might have 
had misgivings when going to die. Two certain causes of 
regret she must have had for Essex. She must have been 
well aware that she had alternately encouraged and irritated 
him over much ; and she must have known that he was a 
better man than many who assisted in his overthrow, and 
that if he had been less worthy of regard, he probably would 
have survived her, as they did. 

It may easily be imagined that Essex was a man for whom 
a strong affection might be entertained. He excited interest 
by his character, and could maintain it by his language. In 
everything he did there was a certain excess, but on the 
liberal side. When a youth, he plunged into the depths of 
rural pleasures and books ; he was lavish of his money and 
good words for his friends; he said everything that came 
uppermost, but then it was worth saying, only his enemies 
were not as well pleased with it as his friends, and they never 
forgot it: in fine, he was romantic, brave, and impassioned. 
He is so like a preux chevalier, that till we call to mind other 
gallant knights who have not been handsome, we are some- 
what surprised to hear that he was not well made, and that 
nothing is said of his face but that it looked reserved — a 
seeming anomaly, which deep thought sometimes produces 
in the countenances of open-hearted men. These were no 
hindrances, however, to the admiration entertained of him 
by the ladies ; and he was so popular with authors and with 
the public, that Warton says he could bring evidence of his 
scarcely ever quitting England or even the metropolis, on the 
most frivolous enterprise, without a pastoral or other poetical 
praise of him, which was sold and sung in the streets. He 
was the friend of Spenser, most likely of Shakspeare too, 



142 SPENSER'S LINES ON ESSEX. 

being the friend of Southampton. Spenser was well acquainted 
with Essex House. In his l Protlialamion] published in 1596, 
he has left interesting evidence of his having visited Leicester 
there; and he follows up the record with a panegyric on 
Leicester's successor, which was probably his first hint to 
Essex that he was still in want of such assistance as he had 
received from his father-in-law. The two passages taken 
together render the hint rather broad, and such as would 
make one a little jealous for the dignity of the great poet, 
were not the manners of that time different in this respect 
from what they are now. Speaking of the Temple, in the 
lines quoted in our last chapter, he goes on to say — 

" Next whereunto there stands a stately place, 
Where oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace 
Of that great lord, which therein wont to dwell. 
Whose want too well now feels my friendless case : 
But, ah ! here fits not well 
Olde woes, but ioyes, to tell 
Against the bridale daye, which is not long : 
Sweet Themmes ! runne softly till I end my song. 

Yet therein now doth lodge a noble peer, 

Great England's glory, and the world's wide wonder, 

Whose dreadful name late through all Spaine did thunder, 

And Hercules' two pillars standing near 

Did make to quake and feare : 

Faire branch of honour, flower of chevalrie ; 

That fillest England with thy triumph's fame, 

Joy have thou of thy noble victorie." 

Essex no doubt took the poet at his word, both for his pane- 
gyric and his hint : for it was he that gave Spenser his funeral 
in Westminster, and he was not of a spirit to treat a great poet, 
as poets have sometimes been treated — with neglect in their 
lifetime, and self-complacent monuments to them after their 
death. 

We shall close this notice (in which we have endeavoured 
to concentrate all the interest we could) of the once great and 
applauded Essex, whose memory long retained its popularity, 
and gave rise to several tragedies, with a letter of his to the 
Lord Keeper Egerton, in which there is one of his finest senti- 
ments expressed -with his most passionate felicity. Egerton's 
eldest son had accompanied Essex into Ireland, and died there, 
which is the subject of the letter. As Spenser's death also 
happened just before the earl set out for that country, at a 
moment when he might have been of political as well as 
poetical use to him (for Spenser was a politician, and had 



LETTER OF ESSEX TO LORD KEEPER EGERTON. 143 

been employed in the affairs of Ireland), Mr. Todd thinks, 
that among the friends alluded to, part of the regret may have 
been for him : 

" Whatt can you receave from a cursed country butt vnfortunate 
newes ? whatt can be my stile (whom heaven and earth are agreed to 
make a martyr) butt a stile of mourning ? nott for myself thatt I 
smart, for I wold I had in my hart the sorow of all my frends, but I 
mourn that my destiny is to overlive my deerest frendes. Of y r losse 
yt is neither good for me to write nor you to reade. But I protest I 
felt myself sensibly dismembered, when I lost my frend. Shew 
y r strength in lyfe. Lett me, yf yt be God's will, shew yt in taking 
leave of the world, and hasting after my frends. Butt I will live 
and dy 

" More y r lp's then any 

" man's living, 

" Essex." 
il Arbrackan, this last day of August" [1599]. 

"Little,"* says Mr. Todd, " did the generous but unfortunate Essex 
then imagine, that the learned statesman, to whom this letter of con- 
dolence was addressed, would be directed very soon afterwards to 
issue an order for his execution. The original warrant, to which the 
name ol Elizabeth is prefixed, is now in the possession of the Marquis 
of Stafford ; and the queen has written her name, not with the firm- 
ness observable in numerous documents existing in the same and 
other collections, but with apparent tremor and hesitation." 

In Essex House was born another Robert, Earl of Essex, 
son of the preceding, well known in history as general of the 
Parliament. He was a child when his father died ; and was 
in the hands, first, of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, 
and, secondly, of Henry Saville (afterwards Sir Henry), under 
whose severe discipline he was educated at Eton. We men- 
tion these circumstances, because they tended to keep him in 
that Presbyterian interest, Avhich his father patronised out of 
a love of toleration and popularity. Perhaps, also, they did 
him no good with his wives ; for he married two, and was 
singularly unfortunate in both. To the first, Lady Frances 
Howard, he was betrothed when a boy. He travelled, re- 
turned, and married her, with little love on his own side, and 
none on hers. Her connection with Car, Earl of Somerset, 
and all the infamy, crime, and wretchedness it brought upon 
her, are well known. Her best excuse, which is the ordinary 
one in cases of great wickedness (and it is a comfort to human 
nature that it is so), is, that she was a great fool. Her dislike 
of her first husband was not, perhaps, the least excusable part 
of her conduct, first, because she was a child like himself 
* Todd's edit, of Spenser, vol. i., p. cxli. 



144 ESSEX, GENERAL OF THE PARLIAMENT. 

when they were betrothed ; and secondly, because his second 
wife appears to have liked him no better. The latter was 
divorced also. After this, Essex took to a country retire- 
ment, and subsequently to an active part in the Civil Wars, 
during which his love of justice and affability to his inferiors 
rendered him extremely popular. He was of equivocal ser- 
vice, however, to the Parliament. He was a better general 
than politician, not of a commanding genius in any respect, 
and was suspected, not without reason, of an overweening 
desire to accommodate matters too much, partly out of 
ignorance of what the nature of the quarrel demanded, and 
partly from an affectation of playing the part of an amicable 
dictator for his own aggrandisement. So the Parliament got 
rid of him by the famous self-denying ordinance. Clarendon 
says, that when he resigned his commission, the whole Parlia- 
ment went the day following to Essex House, to return him 
thanks for his great services ; but a late historian of the 
commonwealth says, there is no trace of this compliment on 
the journals.* Next year they attended him to his grave. 
Essex's character was a prose-copy of his father's, with the 
love and romance left out. 

Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, founded in Essex 
Street one of his minor clubs. The Literary Club did not 
meet often enough for his want of society, was too distant, and 
perhaps had now become too much for his conversational 
ambition. He wanted a mixture of inferior intellects to be 
at ease with. Accordingly, this club, which was held at the 
Essex Head, then kept by a servant of Mr. Thrale, was of a 
more miscellaneous nature than the other, and made no pre- 
tension to expense. One cannot help smiling at the modest 
and pensive tone of the letter which Johnson sent to Sir 
Joshua, inviting him to join it. " The terms are lax, and the 
expenses light. We meet thrice a-week ; and he who misses, 
forfeits two-pence." f This stretch of philosophy seems to 
have startled the fashionable painter, who declined to become 
a member. When we find, however, in the list the names 
of Brocklesby, Horsley, Daines Barrington, and Windham, 
Bos well has reason to say that Sir John Hawkins's charge of 
its being a "low ale-house association" appears to be suffi- 
ciently obviated. But the names might have been subscribed 
out of civility without any further intention. The club, 

* Godwin's History of the Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 410, 
f Boswell, vol. iv., p. 276, 



ST. CLEMENT DANES. 145 

nevertheless, was in existence when Boswell wrote, and went 
on, he says, happily. Johnson said of him, when he was pro- 
posed, " Boswell is a very clubable man." 

In Devereux Court, through which there is a passage round 
into the Temple, is the Grecian Coffee House, supposed to be 
the oldest in London. We should rather say the revival of 
the oldest, for the premises were burnt down and rebuilt. 
The Grecian was the house from which Steele proposed to 
date his learned articles in the Tatler. 

In this court are the premises of the eminent tea-dealers, 
Messrs. Twining, the front of which, surmounted with its 
stone figures of Chinese, has an elegant appearance in the 
Strand. We notice the house, not only on this account, but 
because the family have to boast of a very accomplished 
scholar, the translator of the Poetics of Aristotle. Mr. 
Twining was contemporary with Gray and Mason at Cam- 
bridge; and besides his acquirements as a linguist (for, in 
addition to his knowledge of Greek and Latin, he wrote 
French and Italian with idiomatic accuracy), was a musician 
so accomplished as to lead the concerts and oratorios that 
were performed during term-time, when Bate played the organ 
and harpsichord. He was also a lively companion, full of 
wit and playfulness, yet so able to content himself with 
country privacy, and so exemplary a clergyman, that for the 
last forty years of his life he scarcely allowed himself to be 
absent from his parishioners more than a fortnight in a 
year. 

The church of St. Clement Danes, which unworthily occu- 
pies the open part of the Strand, to the west of Essex Street, 
was the one most frequented by Dr. Johnson. It is not 
known why this church was called St. Clement Danes. 
Some think because there was a massacre of the Danes there- 
abouts; others because Harold Harefoot was buried there; 
and others, because the Danes had the quarter given them to 
live in, when Alfred the Great drove them out of London, 
the monarch at the same time building the church, in order 
to assist their conversion to Christianity. The name 'St. 
Clement has been derived with probability from the patron 
saint of Pope Clement III., a great friend of the Templars, to 
whom the church at one time belonged. St. Clement's was 
rebuilt towards the end of the century before last by Edward 
Pierce, under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, but is a 
very incongruous ungainly edifice. Its best aspect is at 

L 



146 ST. CLEMENT DANES. 

night-time in winter, when the deformities of its body are not 
seen, and the pale steeple rises with a sort of ghastliness of 
grandeur through the cloudy atmosphere. The chimes may 
still be heard at midnight, as FalstafT describes having heard 
them with Justice Shallow. If they did not execute one of 
Handel's psalm-tunes, we should take them to be the very 
same he speaks of, and conclude that they had grown hoarse 
with age and sitting-up ; for to our knowledge they have lost 
some of their notes these twenty years, and the rest are 
falling away. A steeple should set a better example. 

A few years back, when the improvements on the north 
side, in this quarter, had not been followed by those on the 
south, Gay's picture of the avenue between the church and 
the houses was true in all its parts. We remember the 
" combs dangling in our faces," and almost mourned their 
loss for the sake of the poet. 

" Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, 
Whose straiten'd bounds encroach upon the Strand ; 
Where the low penthouse bows the walker's head, 
And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread ; 
Where not a post protects the narrow space, 
And, strung in twines, combs dangle in thy face ; 
Summon at once thy courage, rouse thy care, 
Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware. 
Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier's steeds 
Drag the black load ; another cart succeeds ; 
Team follows team, crowds heap'd on crowds appear, 
And wait impatient till the road grow clear." 

Everybody can testify to the truth of this description. A 
little patience, however, is well repaid by the sight of the 
noble creatures dragging up the loads. The horses of the 
colliers and brewers of London are worth notice at all times 
for the magnificence of their build. Gay proceeds to other 
particulars, now no longer to be encountered. He cautions 
you how you lose your sword ; and adds a pleasant mode of 
theft, practised in those times : — 

" Nor is the flaxen wig with safety worn : 
High on the shoulder, in a basket borne, 
Lurks the sly boy, whose hands, to rapine bred, 
Plucks off the curling honours of thy head."* 

* Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, book iii. 
Of a similar, and more perplexing facetiousness was the trick of 
extracting wigs out of hackney coaches. " The thieves," says the 
Weekly Journal (March 30, 1717), "have got such a villanous way 
now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of 



147 

Clement's Inn is named from the church. The device over 
the gate, of an anchor and the letter C, is supposed to allude 
to the martyrdom of St. Clement, who is said to have been 
tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea, by order of the 
Emperor Trajan. 

"The hall is situated on the south side of a neat but small 
quadrangle. It is a Tuscan diminutive building, with a very large 
Corinthian door, and arched windows, erected in 1715. Another 
irregular area is surrounded by convenient houses, in which are the 
possessor's chambers. Part of this is a pretty garden, with a kneel- 
ing African, of considerable merit, supporting a dial, on the eastern 
side."* 

In Knox's Elegant Extracts are some lines on this negro, 
which have often been repeated : — 

" In vain, poor sable son of woe* 
Thou seek'st the tender tear ; 
Eor thee in vain with pangs they flow $ 
For mercy dwells not here. 

From cannibals thou fledst in vain ; 

Lawyers less quarter give ; 
The first won't eat you till you're slain, 

The last will do't alive." 

This inn, like all the other inns of court, is of great 
antiquity. Dugdale states it to have been an inn of Chancery 
in the reign of Edward II. Some have conjectured, accord- 
ing to Mr. Moser, " that near this spot stood an inn, as far 
back as the time of King Ethelred, for the reception of 
penitents who came to St. Clement's Well ; that a religious 
house was in process of time established, and that the church 
rose in consequence." Be this as it may, the holy brother- 
hood was probably removed to some other institution ; the 
Holy Lamb, an inn on the west side of the lane, received the 
guests ; and the monastery was converted, or rather perverted, 
from the purposes of the gospel to those of the law, and was 
probably, in this profession, considered as a house of consider- 
able antiquity in the days of Shakspeare ; for he, who with 

hackney coaches, and take away their wigs, or fine head-dresses of 
gentlewomen ; so a gentleman was served last Sunday in Tooley 
Street, and another but last Tuesday in Eenchurch Street ; wherefore 
this may serve as a caution to gentlemen and gentlewomen that ride 
single in the night-time, to sit on the fore-seat, which will prevent 
that way of robbing." — Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and 
Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, second edit., 
vol. i., p. 104. 
* Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii. 

L2 



148 CLEMENT'S INN, 

respect to this kind of chronology may be safely quoted, 
makes in the second act of Henry IV. one of his justices a 
member of that society : — 

" He must to the Inns of Court. I was of Clement's once myself, 
where they talk of Mad Shallow still." 

A pump now covers St. Clement's Well. Fitzstephen, in 
his description of London, in the reign of Henry II., speaks 
of certain " excellent springs at a small distance" from the 
city, " whose waters are sweet, salubrious, and clear, and 
whose runnels murmur o'er the shining stones : among these," 
he continues, " Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement's 
Well may be esteemed the principal, as being much the most 
frequented, both by the scholars from the school (West- 
minster) and the youth from the city, when on a summer's 
evening they are disposed to take an airing." 

Six hundred years and upwards have elapsed since Eitz- 
stephen wrote. It is pleasant to think that the well has lasted 
so long, and that the place is still quiet. 

The Clare family, who have left their name to Clare 
Market, appear to have occupied Clement's Inn during part 
of the reign of the Tudors. From their hands it reverted to 
those of the law. It is an appendage to the Inner Temple. 
We are not aware of any greater legal personage having 
been bred there, than the one just mentioned. Shallow takes 
delight in his local recollections, particularly of this inn. 
In one of the masterly scenes of this kind, Falstaff's 
corroboration of a less pleasant recollection, and Shallow's 
anger against the cause of it, after such a lapse of time, are 
very ludicrous. 

" Shallow. Oh, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in 
the windmill in St. George's Fields ? 

" Fals. No more of that, good Master Shallow, no more of that. 

" Shal. Ha, it was a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive ? 

" Fals. She lives, Master Shallow. 

" Shal She never could away with me. 

" Fals. Never, never ; she would always say she could not abide 
Master Shallow. 

" Shal. By the mass. I could anger her to the heart. She was then 
a bonaroba. Doth she hold her own well ? — and had Kobin Night- 
work by old Nightwork, before I came to Clement's Inn. 

'* Silence. That's fifty-five years ago. 

" Shal. Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this 
knight and I have seen ! Ah, Sir John, said I well ? 

" Fals, We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow. 

" Shal. That we have, that we have, that we have ; in faith, Sir 
John, we have; our watchword was, Bern, boyst Come, let's to 



STORT OF THE COUNTESS OF NOTTINGHAM. 149 

dinner: come, let's to dinner: Oh, the days that we have seen! 
Come, come." * 

The sites of Arundel, Norfolk, Surrey, and Howard Streets 
(the last of which crosses the others), were formerly occupied 
by the house and grounds originally constituting the town 
residence of the Bishop of Bath and "Wells, then of the Lord 
High Admiral Seymour, and afterwards of the Howards Earls 
of Arundel, from whom it came into possession of the Duke of 
Norfolk. It was successively called Bath's Inn (Hampton 
Place, according to some, but we know not why), Seymour 
Place, Arundel House, and Norfolk House. It was a wide low 
house, but according to Sully, who lodged in it when he was 
ambassador to James L, very convenient, on account of the 
multitude of rooms on the same floor. 

In this house the Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour, 
brother of the Protector Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., 
contrived to place the Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth, 
with a design of possessing her person, and sharing her suc- 
cession to the Crown. No doubt is entertained of these view r s 
by the historians. Elizabeth was not averse to him, though 
he had lately married the Queen Dowager (Catherine Parr) ; 
and some gossipping stories transpired of the evidences of 
their good-will. Catherine's death increased the suspicion, 
and she herself expressed it on her death-bed. Seymour's 
ambition, however, shortly brought him to the scaffold, and 
saved us from a King Thomas I., who would probably, as 
Pennant thinks, have been a very bad one. 

We have mentioned the Countess of Nottingham who with- 
held from Elizabeth the ring sent her by Essex. It was in 
this house she died. Her husband w T as a Howard, and, pro- 
bably, she was on a visit there. "We take an opportunity, 
therefore, of relating the particulars of that romantic story, 
as collected by the accurate Dr. Birch, and repeated in the 
Memoirs of the Peers of England during the reign of James I. 
" The following curious story," says the compiler of this work, 
" was frequently told by Lady Elizabeth Spelman, great grand- 
daughter of Sir Eobert Carey, brother of Lady Nottingham, 
and afterwards Earl of Monmouth, whose curious memoirs of 
himself were published a few years ago by Lord Corke." 

" When Catherine, Countess of Nottingham, was dying (as she did, 
according to his lordship's own account, about a fortnight before 
Queen Elizabeth), she sent to her Majesty to desire that she might 

* Second fart of Henry IV, act 3. sc 2, 



150 THOMAS HOWARD EARL OF ARUNDEL. 

see her, in order to reveal something to her Majesty without the 
discovery of which she could not die in peace. Upon the Queen's 
coming, Lady Nottingham told her, that, while the Earl of Essex lay 
under sentence of death, he was desirous of asking her Majesty's 
mercy, in the manner prescribed by herself, during the height of his 
favour ; the -Queen having given him a ring, which being sent to her 
as a token of his distress, might entitle him to her protection. But 
the earl, jealous of those about him, and not caring to trust any of 
them with it, as he was looking out of his window one morning, 
saw a boy, with whose appearance he was pleased ; and engaging him 
by money and promises, directed him to carry the ring, which he 
took from his finger and threw down, to Lady Scroope, a sister of the 
Countess of Nottingham, and a friend of his lordship, who attended upon 
the Queen ; and to beg of her that she would present it to her Majesty. 
The boy, by mistake, carried it to Lady Nottingham, who showed it 
to her husband, the admiral, an enemy of Lord Essex, in order to 
take his advice. The admiral forbid her to carry it, or return any 
answer to the message; but insisted upon her keeping the ring. 

" The Countess of Nottingham, having made this discovery, begged 
the Queen's forgiveness; but her Majesty answered, ' God may forgive 
you, but I never can,' and left the room with great emotion. Her mind 
was so struck with the story that she never went into bed, nor took 
any sustenance from that instant, for Camden is of opinion, that her 
chief reason for suffering the earl to be executed, was his supposed 
obstinacy in not applying to her for mercy."* 

" In confirmation of the time of the countess's death," continues 
the compiler, " it now appears from the parish register of Chelsea, 
extracted by Mr. Lysons (Environs of London, vol. ii., p. 120), that 
she died at Arundel House, London, February 25, and was buried the 
28th, 1603. Her funeral was kept at Chelsea, March 21st; and Queen 
Elizabeth died three days afterwards." 

Clarendon gives a singular character of this house and its 
master -when it was in possession of Thomas Howard, Earl of 
Arundel. He says that the earl 

" Seemed to live, as it were, in another nation, his house being a 
place to which all people resorted, who resorted to no other place; 
strangers, or such as affected to look like strangers, and dressed 
themselves accordingly. He was willing to be thought a scholar, and 
to understand the most mysterious parts of antiquity, because he 
made a wonderful and costly purchase of excellent statues whilst in 
Italy and in Rome (some whereof he could never obtain permission to 
remove out of Rome, though he had paid for them), and had a rare 
collection of medals. As to all parts of learning, he was almost 
illiterate, and thought no other part of history so considerable as 
what related to his own family, in which, no doubt, there had been 

* Birch's Negotiations, pp. 206, 207, quoted in the work above 
mentioned, p. 189. Whenever we quote from any authorities but the 
original, we beg the reader to bear in mind, first, that we always 
notice our having done so ; and, secondly, that we make a point of 
comparing the originals with the report. Both Monmouth and Birch, 
for example, have been consulted in the present instance. 



WILLIAM PENN. 151 

some very memorable persons. It cannot be denied that he had in 
his own person, in his aspect and countenance, the appearance of a 
great man, which he preserved in his gait and motion. He wore and 
affected a habit very different from that of the time, such as men had 
only beheld in pictures of the most considerable men; all which drew 
the eyes of most, and the reverence of many, towards him, as the 
image and representative of the ancient nobility, and native gravity 
of the nobles, when they had been most venerable ; but this was 
only his outside, his nature and true humour being much disposed to 
levity and delights, which indeed were very despicable and childish." 

The marbles here mentioned, now at Oxford, were collected 
at Arundel House. This character from the pen of Clarendon 
has been thought too severe. Perhaps the earl had given the 
noble historian a repulse when he was nothing but plain 
Mr. Hyde ; for personal resentments of this sort are apparent 
in his writings. The last Duke of Norfolk but one, who 
wrote anecdotes on the Howard family, asks how the man 
who collected the Oxford marbles could be the slave of such 
family self-love as Clarendon describes, and how it was that 
he held the first places in the state, and_ the most important 
commissions abroad. It is well-known, however, that a man 
may do all this, and yet be more fortunate than wise. 
Arundel was certainly proud, if not dull ; and the proudest 
men are not apt to be the brightest. It was he that, in a 
dispute with Lord Spenser, in the Upper House, when the 
latter spoke of the treason of the earl's ancestors, said, " My 
lord, my lord, while my ancestors were plotting treason, 
yours were keeping sheep." He little thought that his 
marbles would help to bring about a time, when an historian, 
by no means indifferent to rank and title, should regard a 
romantic poem as the " brightest jewel" in a ducal coronet, 
and that coronet be a Spenser's. * 

At the south-west corner of Norfolk Street lived at one 
time the famous Penn, who from being a coxcomb in his 
youth became a Quaker and a founder of a state. However, 
his coxcombry was a falling-off from early seriousness. His 
father was a rough admiral, who could not for the life of him 
conceive why his son should relapse into a preciseness so 
unlike the rest of the world, and so unfitted to succeed at 
court. Voltaire says,f that young Penn (for he was little 
more than twenty years of age) appeared suddenly before his 

* We allude to the celebrated saying of Gibbon respecting the Fairy 
Queen. 

f In his Letters on the English Ration, But we quote from 
memory. 



152 DR. BIRCH. 

father in a Quaker dress, and to the old man's astonishment 
and indignation said, without moving his hat, "Friend Penn, 
how dost thee do?" But, according to more serious bio- 
graphers, the change was not so sudden. The hat, however, 
was a great matter of contention between them, the admiral 
wishing to stipulate that his son should uncover to the King 
(Charles II.), the King's brother, and himself; but Penn 
having recourse to " fasting and supplication," found that 
his hat was not to be moved. These were the weaknesses of 
a young enthusiast. His enthusiam remained for greater 
purposes ; but he is understood to have grown wiser with 
regard to the rest, though he continued a Quaker for life. 
Penn, though a legislator, never seems to have given up a 
taste for good living. His appearance in the portraits of 
him, notwithstanding his garb, is fat and festive ; and he 
died of apoplexy. 

In the same house, we believe, that had been occupied by 
Penn*, resided an author who must not be passed over in a 
work of this kind ; to wit, the indefatigable and honest 
antiquary, Dr. Birch. He came of a Quaker stock. Birch 
astonished his friends by going a great deal into company ; 
but the secret of his uniting sociality with labour, was his 
early rising. This, which appears to be one of the main 
secrets of longevity, ought to have kept him older, for he died 
at the age of sixty-one: but he was probably festive as well 
social, and should have taken more exercise. Being a bad 
horseman, he was thrown on the Hampstead road, and killed 
on the spot ; but the doctors were uncertain whether apoplexy 
had not a hand in the disaster. In speaking of Birch, nobody 
should omit a charming billet, written to him by his first 
wife, almost in the article of death. The death took place 
within a year after their marriage, and was accelerated by 
childbed. 

" This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere hearty thanka 
for every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife. 
" July 31, 1729." "Hannah Birch."* 

In Norfolk Street, for upwards of thirty years, lived 
Dr. Brocklesby, the friend and physician of Dr. Johnson. 
Physicians of this class may, par excellence, be styled the 

* "We conclude so from our authorities in both instances. Mr. 
Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., p. 398. 

f See his life in Chalmers's General Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., 
p. 280. 



DR. BROCKLESBY. 153 

friends of men of letters. They partake of their accomplish- 
ments, understand their infirmities, sympathise with their 
zeal to do good, and prolong their lives by the most delicate 
and disinterested attentions. Between no two professions 
has a more liberal and cordial intimacy been maintained than 
between literature and medicine. Brocklesby was an honour 
to the highest of his calling. 

" In the course of his practice," we are told that " his advice, as 
well as his purse, was ever accessible to the poor, as well as to men 
of merit who stood in need of either. Besides giving his advice 
to the poor of all descriptions, which he did with an active and 
unwearied benevolence, he had always upon his list two or three 
poor widows, to whom he granted small annuities ; and who, on 
the quarter-day of receiving their stipends, always partook of the 
hospitalities of his table. To his relations, who wanted his assist- 
ance in their business or professions, he was not only liberal, but 
so judicious in his liberalities as to supersede the necessity of a repe- 
tition of them. To his friend Dr Johnson (when it was in agitation 
amongst his friends to procure an enlargement of his pension, the 
better to enable him to travel for the benefit of his health), he offered 
an establishment of one hundred pounds per year during his life; and 
upon Dr. Johnson's declining it (which he did in the most affec- 
tionate terms of gratitude and friendship), he made him a second 
offer of apartments in his own house, for the more immedi-ate benefit 
of medical advice. To his old and intimate friend Edmund Burke, 
he had many years back bequeathed by will the sum of one thousand 
pounds ; but recollecting that this event might take place (which it 
afterwards did) when such a legacy could be of no service to him, he, 
with that judicious liberality for which he was always distinguished, 
gave it to him in advance, ' ut pignus amicitice : ' it was accepted as 
such by Mr. Burke, accompanied with a letter, which none but a 
man feeling the grandeur and purity of friendship like him could 
dictate."* 

If it be dangerous in the present condition of society, to 
incur pecuniary obligations, particularly for those who are 
more qualified to think than to act, and who may ultimately 
startle to find themselves in positions in which they can 
neither prove the benefit done them, nor the good feelings 
which allowed them to receive it, nobody can doubt the 
generosity of such a man as Brocklesby; who, so far from 
being a mere patron, jealous of being obliged himself, was 
equally as prepared to receive kindness as to show it. 
Proposing just before he died to go down to Burke's 
house at Beaconsfield, and somebody hinting to him the 
danger of being fatigued, and of lying out of his own bed, 

* General Biographical Dictionary, 8vo., 1812, vol. vii. 



154 CONGREVE. 

he replied with his usual calmness, " My good friend, I per- 
fectly understand your hint, and am thankful to you for it ; 
but where's the difference, whether I die at a friend's house, 
at an inn, or in a postchaise ? I hope I am every way pre- 
pared for such an event, and perhaps it is as well to elude the 
expectation of it." This was said like a man, and a friend. 
Brocklesby was not one who would cant about giving trouble 
at such a moment — the screen of those who hate to be troubled ; 
neither would he grudge a friend the melancholy satisfaction 
of giving him a bed to die in. He better understood the first 
principles which give light and life to the world, and left 
jealousy and misgiving to the vulgar. 

Dr. Brocklesby died at his house in the street above men- 
tioned, and was buried in the churchyard. Lee was buried, 
" at St. Clement Danes ;" probably, therefore, in the church- 
yard also. There are now in that spot some trees, by far 
the best things about the church. The reader may imagine 
them to shade the places where the poet and the physician lie. 

Arundel or Norfolk House, after the great fire, became the 
temporary place of meeting for the Royal Society, previously 
to its return to Gresham College. It was pulled down on 
their leaving it, the century before last, and the streets before 
mentioned built in its room. They appear to have been 
favourite places of residence with persons connected with the 
drama. Congreve lived in Surrey Street, Mountford the 
player in Norfolk Street, Mrs. Bracegirdle in Howard Street, 
and Mrs. Barry somewhere near her. 

Congreve died where he had lived (Jan. 29, 1728-9), after 
having been for several years afflicted with blindness and 
gout ; of which, however, he seems to have made the best he 
could, by the help of good sense and naturally good spirits. 
If his wits ever failed him, it was in the propensity to a love of 
rank and fashion, which, in spite of all that he had seen in the 
world, never forsook him. It originated probably in the need 
he thought he had of them, when he first set out in life. The 
finest sense of men of his cast does not rise above a graceful 
selfishness. It was most probably in Surrey Street (for he 
had come to the " verge of life"), that he had a visit paid 
him by Voltaire, who has recorded the disgust given him by 
an ebullition of his foppery : for the Frenchman had a great 
admiration of him as a writer. " Congreve spoke of his 
works," says Voltaire, " as of trifles that were beneath him ; 
and hinted to me, in our first conversation, that I should visit 



CONGREVE *S BEQUEST TO DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 155 

him upon no other foot than upon that of a gentleman, who 
led a life of plainness and simplicity. I answered, that had he 
been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never 
have come to see him ; and I was very much disgusted at so 
unseasonable a piece of vanity."* Our readers will admire 
the fineness of this rebuke. 

But the most glaring instance of this propensity was his 
leaving the bulk of his fortune to a duchess, when he had 
poor relations in want of it. 

"Having lain in state," says Johnson, "in the Jerusalem Chamber, 
he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected 
to his memory by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, to whom, for 
reasons either not known or not mentioned, he bequeathed a legacy of 
about ten thousand pounds, the accumulation of attentive parsimony, 
which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great 
assistance to the ancient family from which he descended ; at that 
time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and 
distress."! 

" Congreve," says Dr. Young, " was very intimate for years with 
Mrs. Bracegirdle, who lived in the same street — his house very near 
hers; until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. 
He then quitted that house. The duchess showed me a diamond 
necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear), that cost seven 
thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left 
her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor 
Mrs. Bracegirdle !"J 

Yet this dramatist, throughout his life, had had the good 
word of everybody. All parties praised him : all parties kept 
him in office (he had some places that are said to have pro- 
duced him twelve hundred a year) : Pope dedicated his Iliad 
to him ; called him, after his death, Ultimus Romanorum ; and 
added that " Garth, Yanbrugh, and he were the three most 
honest-hearted, real good men of the Kit-Kat Club ! " § 

The secret of this is, that Congreve loved above all things 
to be at ease, and spoke politicly of everybody. He had a 
bad opinion of mankind, as we may see by his comedies ; 
and he made the best of it, by conversing with them as if he 
took heed of their claws. The only person, we believe, that 
he ever opposed, was Collier, who attacked the stage with 
more spirit than elegance, and who was at enmity with the 
whole world of wit and fashion. We are far from thinking 
with Collier, that the abuses of the stage outweigh the benefit 
it does to the world ; nor do we think the world by any 

* Letters on the English Nation. 

f Life, in Chalmers's English Poets, p. 26. 

X Spence's Anecdotes, p. 376. § Idem, p. 46. 



156 CONGREVE. 

means so bad as Congreve supposed it, nor himself either : 
but it is useful to know the tendencies of those who have a 
habit of thinking otherwise. 

Congreve's bequest created a good deal of gossip. Curll, 
the principal scandal-monger of those times, got up a catch- 
penny life of him, professing to be written by " Charles 
Wilson, Esq.," but supposed to be the work of Oldmixon. 
There is no relying upon Charles Wilson ; but, from internal 
evidence, we may take his word occasionally ; and we may 
believe him when he says that the duchess and her friends 
were alarmed at the threatened book. The picture which he 
draws of her manner has also an air like a woman of quality. 
She had demanded a sight of the documents on which the 
book was founded ; and being refused, asked what authority 
they had, and what pieces contained in it were genuine. 
" Upon being civilly told there would be found several essays, 
letters, and characters of that gentleman's writing," says 
Mr. Wilson, " she, with a most affected, extraordinary, 
dramatic drawl, cried out, ' Not one single sheet of paper, I 
dare to swear.'"* Mr. Wilson's own grand air in return is 
very amusing. He speaks of Arbuthnot's coming with " ex- 
presses," probably to Curll's ; and adds, that if he be 
despatched with any more, " he may, if he please, come to 
me, who am as easily to be found in Great Kussell Street, 
Bloomsbury, when in town, as he is in Burlington Gardens. — • 
Cha. Wilson." 

Mr. Wilson's book opens with a copy of the will, in which 
500?. are left among the Congreves ; about 500Z. more to 
friends and domestics, &c. (not omitting 200?. to Mrs. Brace- 
girdle) ; and all the rest (with power to annul or increase the 
complimentary part of the legacies) to the Duchess of 
Marlborough. We know not that anybody could have 
brought forward grounds for objecting to this will, had the 
duchess been poor herself ; for his relations may or may not 
have have had claims upon him — relations, as such, not 
being of necessity friends, though it is generally fit that they 
should partake of the family prosperity. We except, of 
course, a man's immediate kindred, particularly those whom 

* Memoirs of the Life, Writings, &c, of William Congreve, Esq., 
1730, p. xi. Curll discreetly omits his name in the titlepage. [On 
reconsidering this interview (though we have no longer the book by 
us, and therefore speak from memory) we are doubtful, whether the 
lady was not Mrs, Bracegirdle, instead of the duchess,] 



HIS CHARACTER. 157 

he has brought into the world. But here was a woman, 
rolling in wealth, and relatives neither entirely forgotten, nor 
yet, it seems, properly assisted. The bequest must, therefore, 
either have been a mere piece of vanity, or the consequence of 
habitual subjection to a woman's humours. The duchess was 
not ungrateful to his memory. She raised him, as we have 
seen, a monument ; and it is related in Cibber's Lives of the 
the Poets,* we know not on what authority, that she missed 
his company so much, as to cause " an image of him to be 
placed every day on her toilet-table, to which she would talk 
as to the living Mr. Congreve, with all the freedom of the 
most polite and unreserved conversation." There is something 
very ludicrous in this way of putting a case, which might 
otherwise be affecting. It is as if there had been a sort of 
polite mania on both sides. 

Congreve's plays are exquisite of their kind, and the exces- 
sive heartlessness and duplicity of some of his characters are 
not to be taken without allowance for the ugly ideal. There 
is something not natural, both in his characters and wit ; and 
we read him rather to see how entertaining he can make his 
superfine ladies and gentlemen, and what a pack of sensual 
busybodies they are, like insects over a pool, than from any 
true sense of them as " men and women." As a companion 
he must have been exquisite to a woman of fashion. We can 
believe that the duchess, in ignorance of any tragic emotion 
but what was mixed with his loss, would really talk with a 
waxen image of him in a peruke, and think the universe con- 
tained nothing better. It was carrying wit and politeness 
beyond the grave. Queen Constance in Shakspeare makes 
grief put on the pretty looks of her lost child : the Duchess 
of Marlborough made it put on a wig and jaunty air, such as 
she had given her friend in his monument in Westminster 
Abbey. No criticism on his plays could be more perfect. 
Congreve's serious poetry is a refreshment, from its extreme 
insipidity and common -place. Everybody is innocent in some 
corner of the mind, and has faith in something. Congreve 
had no faith in his fellow-creatures, but he had a scholar's 
(not a poet's) belief in nymphs and weeping fauns ; and he 
wrote elegies full of them, upon queens and marquisses. If 
it b& true that he wrote the character of Aspasia (Lady 
Elizabeth Hastings), in the Tatler (No. 42), he had indeed 
faith in something better ; for in that paper is not only given 
* Lives of the Poets, &c, by Mr. Cibber and others, 1753. 



158 MRS. BRACEGIRDLE. 

an admiring account of a person of very exalted excellence, 
but the author has said of her one of the finest things that a 
sincere heart could utter ; namely, that " to love her was a 
liberal education." We cannot help thinking, however, that 
the generous and trusting hand of Steele is very visible 
throughout this portrait ; and in the touch just mentioned, in 
particular. 

The engaging manners of Mrs. Bracegirdle gave rise to a 
tragical circumstance in Howard Street — the death of Mount- 
ford her fellow-player. Mrs. Bracegirdle, one of the most 
popular actresses of that time, was a brunette, not remarkable 
for her beauty, but so much so for the attractiveness superior 
to beauty, that Cibber calls her the " darling of the stage," 
and says it was a kind of fashion for the young men about 
town to have a tenderness for her. This general regard she 
preserved by setting a value on herself, not so common with 
actresses at that time as it has been since. Accordingly, some 
made honourable proposals, which were then still more re- 
markable. In Rowe's poems, there is a bantering epistle to 

an Earl of S , advising him not to care for what people 

might think, but to pursue his inclinations to that eifect. 
Among others a Captain Hill made desperate love, professing 
the same intentions ; but he was a man of bad character, 
and the lady would have nothing to say to him. The captain, 
like a proper coxcomb, took it into his head that nothing 
could have prevented his success, but some other person ; and 
he fixed upon Mountford as the happy man. Mountford was 
the best lover and finest gentleman then on the stage, as 
Mrs. Bracegirdle was the most charming heroine ; but it does 
not appear that Hill had any greater ground for his suspicion 
than their frequent performance in the same play, which, 
however, to a jealous man, must have been extremely provok- 
ing. They used to act Alexander and Statira together. In 
Mountford' s Alexander, according to Cibber, there were seen 
" the great, the tender, the penitent, the despairing, the trans- 
ported, and the amiable, in the highest perfection ;" and " if 
anything," he said, " could excuse that desperate extravagance 
of love, that almost frantic passion," it was when Mrs. 
Bracegirdle was the Statira. Imagine a dark-souled fellow in 
the pit thinking himself in love with this Statira, and that 
the passion between her and the Alexander was real. This 
play was acted a few nights before the catastrophe which we 
are about to relate. 



MRS. BRACEGIKDLE. 159 

Hill was intimate with another man of bad character, Lord 
Mohun; who agreed to assist him in carrying off Mrs. Brace- 
girdle. The captain had often said that he would be 
" revenged" upon Mountford ; and dining with Lord Mohun 
on the day when they attempted the execution of their 
plot, he said, further, that he would "stab" him "if he 
resisted;" upon which Mohun said that he would " stand by 
his friend." 

Mohun and Hill met at the playhouse at six o'clock, 
changed clothes there, and waited some time for Mrs. Brace- 
girdle ; but not finding her come, they took a coach which 
they had ordered to be ready, drove towards her lodgings in 
Howard Street, and then back to Drury Lane, where they 
directed the coach to stop near Lord Clare's house (by the 
present Craven Buildings). Mrs. Bracegirdle had been 
supping at a Mr. Page's, in Princess Street, Drury Lane. 
She came out, accompanied by her mother, brother, and 
Mr. Page, and was seized by Hill, who, with the aid of a 
number of soldiers, endeavoured to force her into the coach. 
In the coach was Lord Mohun, with seven or eight pistols. 
Old Mrs. Bracegirdle threw her arms round her daughter's 
waist ; her other friends, and at length the passengers, 
interfered; and our heroine succeeded in getting into her 
lodgings in Howard Street, Hill and Mohun following them 
on foot. When they all came to the door, Hill would have 
spoken with Page, but the latter refused ; and the door was 
shut. A witness, at the trial of Lord Mohun, deposed, that 
they knocked several times at the door, and then the captain 
entreated to beg pardon of Mrs. Bracegirdle for having 
affronted her, but in vain. 

Hill and Mohun remained in the street. They sent to a 
tavern for a bottle of wine, and perambulated before the door 
with drawn swords. Mrs. Browne, the mistress of the house, 
came out to know what they did there; upon which Hill 
said that he would light upon Mountford some day or other, 
and that he would be revenged on him. The people in-doors, 
upon this, sent to Mountford's house in Norfolk Street, to 
inform his wife; and she despatched messengers to all the 
places where he was likely to be found, to warn him of his 
danger, but they could not meet with him. Meanwhile the 
constables and watchmen come up and ask the strangers 
what they mean. They say they are drinking a bottle of 
wine. Lord Mohun adds that he is ready to put up his 



HO DEATH OF MOUNTFORD. 

sword, remarking, withal, that he is a " peer of the realm." 
Upon asking why the other gentleman did not put up his, 
his lordship tells them, that his friend had lost the scabbard. 
The watchmen, like " ancient and quiet watchmen," go away 
to the tavern to "examine who they are;" and in the 
meantime Mountford makes his appearance coming up the 
street. Mountford lived in Norfolk Street, but he turned out 
of the path that led to his own house, and was coming 
towards Mrs. Bracegirdle's — whether to her house, or to any 
other, does not appear. By this time two hours had elapsed. 
Mrs. Browne, who seems to have remained watching at the 
door, caught sight of Mountford, and hastened to warn him 
how he advanced. She was either not quick enough, or 
Mountford (which appears most likely) pressed on in spite of 
what she said, and, according to her statement, the following 
dialogue took place between him and Lord Mohun : — 

"Your humble servant, my lord." 

"Your servant, Mr. Mountford. I have a great respect for you, 
Mr. Mountford, and would have no difference between us ; but there 
is a thing fallen out between Mr. Hill and Mrs. Bracegirdle." 

" My lord, has my wife disobliged your lordship ? if she has, she 
shall ask your pardon. But Mrs. Bracegirdle is no concern of mine : 
I know nothing of this matter; I come here by accident. But I hope 
your lordship will not vindicate Hill in such actions as these are." 

Upon this, according to Mrs. Browne's statement, Hill bade 
Mountford draw ; which the other said he w T ould ; but whether 
he received his wound before or after she could not tell, owing 
to its being night-time. 

Another female witness, who lived next door, gives the 
dialogue as follows. Lord Mohun begins : — 

"Mr. Mountford, your humble servant. I am glad to see you" 
(embracing him). 

" Who is this ? my Lord Mohun ? " 

" Yes, it is." 

" "What bringeth your lordship here at this time of night ? " 

"I suppose you were sent for, Mr. Mountford ?" 

"No, indeed ; I came by chance." 

" You have heard of the business of Mrs. Bracegirdle ? " 

Hill (interfering). "Pray, my lord, hold your tongue, This is 
not a convenient time to discuss this business." (On saying which, 
the witness adds, that he would have drawn Mohun away.) 

Mountford. " I am very sorry, my lord, to see that your lordship 
should assist Captain Hill in so ill an action as this : pray let me 
desire your lordship to forbear." 

As soon as he had uttered these words Hill, according to 
the witness, came up and struck Mountford a box on the ear; 



THE MAY POLE IN THE STRAND. 161 

upon which the latter demanded with an oath, " what that 
was for;" and then she gives a confused account of the 
result, which was the receipt of a mortal wound by the 
poor actor. It was agreed that Mountford's sword was not 
drawn in the first instance, and that Hill's was ; and the 
question was settled by the dying deposition of Mountford, 
who stated several times over, that Lord Mohun offered him 
no violence, but that Hill struck him with his left hand, and 
then ran him through the body, before he had time to draw 
in defence. 

Mountford died next day. Hill fled at the time, and we 
hear no more of him. Mohun was tried for his life, but 
acquitted, for want of evidence, of malice prepense. The 
truth is, he. was a great fool, and Hill appears to have been 
another. The captain himself, probably, did not know what 
he intended, though his words would have hung him had he 
been caught. They were a couple of box-lobby swaggerers, 
who had heated themselves with wine ; and Hill, who told the 
constables " they might knock him down if they liked," and 
was for drawing Mohun away on Mountford's appearance, 
was most likely overcome with rage and jealousy at hearing 
the latter speak of him with rebuke. Mohun was at that time 
very young. He never ceased, however, hankering after this 
sort of excitement to his dulness, till he got killed in a duel 
about an estate with the Duke of Hamilton, who was at the 
same time mortally wounded. Swift, in a letter about it, calls 
Mohun a " dog." Pennant says, that when his body was 
taken home bleeding (to his house in Gerrard Street), Lady 
Mohun was very angry at its being flung upon the best 
bed."* 

In front of the spot now occupied by St. Mary-le- Strand, 
commonly called the New Church, anciently stood a cross, at 
which, says Stowe, " in the year 1294, and other times, the 
justices itinerant sat without London." In the place of this 
cross was set up a May-pole, by a blacksmith named John 
Clarges, whose daughter Ann became the wife of Monk, Duke 
of Albemarle. It was for a long time in a state of decay, and 
having been taken down in 1713, a new one was erected 
opposite Somerset House. This second May-pole had two 
gilt balls and a vane on the summit, and was decorated on 

* Pennant's London, ut supra, p. 124. Swift's Letters to Stella. 
The particulars of the case are taken from Howell's State Trials, 
vol. xii., p. 947. 

M 



J 62 CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-STRAND. 

holidays with flags and garlands. The races in the "Dunciad" 
tale place 

" Where the tall May -pole overlook'd the Strand." 

It was removed in 1718, probably being thought in the 
■way of the new church, which was then being finished. 
Sir Isaac Newton begged it of the parish, and afterwards 
sent it to the Kector of Wanstead, who set it up in 
Wanstead Park to support the then largest telescope in 
Europe. The gift of John Clarges came a day too late. In 
old times, May had been a great holiday in the streets of 
London. We shall speak further of it when we come to the 
parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, so called from a May-pole 
higher than the church. But though the holiday returned 
with the Restoration, it never properly recovered the disuse 
occasioned by the civil wars, and the contempt thrown on it 
by the spirit of puritanism. We gained too many advantages 
by the thoughtfulness generated in those times to quarrel with 
their mistakes ; and have no doubt that the progress of know- 
ledge to which they gave an impulse, will bring back the 
advantages they omitted by the way."* 

The New Church, or, more properly, the Church of 
St. Mary -le- Strand, was built by Gibbs, the architect of 
St. Martin-in-the-Fields. It was one of the "fifty," impro- 
perly so called, that are said to have been built in the reign 
of Queen Anne ; for though fifty were ordered, the number 
was not completed. The old church in this quarter, which 
stood at a little distance to the south, was removed by the 
Protector Somerset, to make way for Somerset House, and has 
never been restored. The parishioners went to the neighbour- 
ing churches. The New Church is in the pretty, over-orna- 
mented style, very different from that of St. Martin's with its 
noble front : and though far better than St. Clement's, and as 
superior to many places of worship built lately j" as art is 

* u Captain Baily, said to have accompanied Raleigh in his last 
expedition to Guiana, employed four hackney coaches, with drivers 
in liveries, to ply at the May-pole in the Strand, fixing his own rates, 
about the year 1634. Baily's coaches seem to have been the first of 
what are now called hackney-coaches ; a term at that time applied 
indiscriminately to all coaches let for hire." The favourite Bucking- 
ham, about the year 1619, introduced the sedan. The post-chaise, 
invented in Prance, was introduced by Mr. Tull, son of the well- 
known writer on husbandry. The stage first came in about the year 
1775 ; and mail-coaches appeared in 1785. — See a note to the Tatkr, 
as above, vol. iv., p. 415. 

f This was written in 1834. 



SOMERSET HOUSE. 163 

superior to ignorance, yet it surely is not worthy of its advan- 
tageous situation. It is one of those toys of architecture 
which have been said to require glass cases. For the super- 
fluous height of the steeple, Gibbs offered an excuse. A 
column was to have been erected near the church in honour 
of Queen Anne, but, as the Queen died, she was no longer 
thought deserving the column, and the architect was ordered 
to make a steeple with the materials, whereas he had intended 
only a belfry. Now, to render the steeple fitting, the church 
should have had a wider base ; but the structure was already 
begun, and there was no changing the plan of it. It might be 
still argued, that the steeple should not have been made so 
high : but then, what was to be done with the stones ? This, 
in the mouth of parish virtu, was a triumphant reply. After 
all, however, the artist need not have spoilt his church with 
ornament. He said, that being situated in a very public place, 
" the parishioners" spared no cost to beautify it; but to beau- 
tify a church is not to make it a piece of confectionery."* 

Somerset House occupies the site of a princely mansion 
built by Somerset the Protector, brother of Lady Jane 
Seymour, and uncle to King Edward VI. His character is 
not sufficiently marked to give any additional interest to the 
spot. He was great by accident ; lost and gained his great- 
ness, according as others acted upon it ; and ultimately 
resigned it on the scaffold. The house he left became the 
property of the Crown, and was successively in possession of 
Queen Elizabeth and of the queens of James I., Charles I., and 
Charles II. 

The rooms in this house witnessed many joyous scenes and 
many anxious ones. Somerset had not long inhabited it when 
he was taken to the scaffold. Elizabeth, in her wise economy, 
lent it to hei cousin Lord Hunsdon, whom she frequently 
visited within its walls. 

During its occupation by James's queen, Anne of Denmark 
(from whose family it was called Denmark House), Wilson 
says, that a constant masquerade was going on, the Queen and 

* The faults of the New Church are, that it is too small for the 
steeple; that it is divided into two stories, which make it still smaller; 
that the entablature on the north and south parts is too frequently 
interrupted; that pediments are "affectedly put over each projection;" 
in a word, that a little object is cut up into too many little parts, and 
rendered fantastic with embellishment. See the opinions of Gwynn, 
Kalph,and Malton, quoted in Bray ley's London and Middlesex, vol.iv., 
P . 199 f 

, H 2 



164 CHARLES I. AND HIS FRENCH HOUSEHOLD. 

her ladies, " like so many sea-nymphs, or nereids," appearing 
in various dresses, " to the ravishment of the beholders."* 

Here began the struggle for mastery between Charles I. and 
Henrietta Maria, which terminated in favour of the latter, 
though the King behaved himself manfully at first. Henrietta 
had brought over with her a meddling French household 
which, after repeated grievances, his Majesty was obliged to 
send " packing." He summoned them all together one even- 
ing in the house, and addressed them as follows : — 

" Gentlemen and ladies, 

"I am driven to that extremity, as I am personally come to acquaint 
you, that I very earnestly desire your return into Prance. True it is, 
the deportment of some amongst you hath "been very inoffensive to 
me; but others again have so dallied with my patience, and so highly 
affronted me, as I cannot, and will not, longer endure it."f 

" The King's address, implicating no one, was immediately followed 
by a volley of protestations of innocence. An hour after he had 
delivered his commands, Lord Conway announced to the foreigners, 
that early in the morning carriages and carts and horses would be 
ready for them and their baggage. Amidst a scene of confusion, the 
young Bishop (he was scarcely of age) protested that this was im- 
possible; that ihey owed debts in London, and that much was due to 
them. On the following day, the procureur- general of the Queen flew 
to the keeper of the great seal at the privy council, requiring an 
admission to address his Majesty, then present at his council, on 
matters important to himself an J the Queen. This being denied, he 
exhorted them to maintain the Queen in all her royal prerogatives ; 
and he was answered, ' So we do. 5 

" Their prayers and disputes served to postpone their departure. 
Their conduct during this time was not very decorous. It appears, 
by a contemporary letter-writer, that they flew to take possession of 
the Queen's wardrobe and jewels. They did not leave her a change 
of linen, since it was with difficulty her Majesty procured one. 
Everyone now looked to lay his hand on what he might call his own. 
Everything he could touch was a perquisite. One extraordinary 
expedient was that of inventing bills to the amount of ten thousand 
pounds, for articles and other engagements in which they had entered 
for the service of the Queen, which her Majesty acknowledged, but 
afterwards confessed that the debts were fictitious." % 

" In truth," continues the writer, " the breaking up of this 
French establishment was ruinous to the individuals who had 
purchased their places at the rate of life annuities." Charles 
now grew indignant, and sent the following letter to Buck-* 
ingham : — 

* Life of James I. quoted in Pennant, p. 155. 
f L'Estrange's Life of Charles I., quoted in DTsraeli's Commen* 
taries on the Life and Beign of Charles I., vol. ii.,, p. 218, 
± L'Estrange's Life of Charles I. 



LETTER OF CHARLES I. TO BUCKINGHAM. 1G5 

" Steenie, * 

" I have receaved your letter by Die Greame (Sir Richard Grahame). 
This is my answer : I command you to send all the French away to- 
morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair meanes (but stike not 
long in disputing), otherways force them away, dryving them away 
lyke so manie wilde beastes, until ye have shipped them, and so the 
devil goe with them. Let me heare no answer, but of the performance 
of my command. So I rest, 

" Your faithful, constant, loving friend, 

" Oaking, " C. R." 

"The seventh of August, 1626." 

" This order put an end to the delay, but the King paid the debts, 
the fictitious ones and all — at the cost, as it appears, of fifty thousand 
pounds. Even the haughty beauty, Madame St. George, was pre- 
sented by the king on her dismission with several thousand pounds 
and jewels." 

Still the French, could not go quietly. " The French 
bishop," says DTsraeli, " and the whole party having con- 
trived all sorts of delays to avoid the expulsion, the yeomen 
of the guard were sent to turn them out of Somerset House, 
whence the juvenile prelate, at the same time making his 
protest and mounting the steps of the coach, took his depar- 
ture ' head and shoulders.' In a long procession of near 
forty coaches, after four days' tedious travelling, they reached 
Dover; but the spectacle of these impatient foreigners so 
reluctantly quitting England, gesticulating their sorrows or 
their quarrels, exposed them to the derision, and stirred up 
the prejudices, of the common people. As Madame St. George, 
whose vivacity is always described as extremely French, was 
stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the 
satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap. An English 
courtier who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, 
ran the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the 
boat. The man died on the spot, but no further notice appears 
to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of the 
English courtier." 

Henrietta had a magnificent Catholic chapel in Somerset 
House, and a cloister of Capuchins. The former, has given 
occasion to some interesting descriptions of papal show and 
spectacle in the commentaries just quoted, f 

* Steenie — a familiarisation of Stephen. The name was given 
Buckingham by James I., in reference to the beauty of St. Stephen, 
whose face, during his martyrdom, is described in the New Testament 
fts shining like that of an angel. 

f See the account of the Paradise of Glory, in vol. ii., p. 225. 



ICG PEPYs's GOSSIP OP THE COURT OF CHARLES II. 

Cromwell's body lay in state at Somerset House, as Monk's 
did afterwards, probably on that account. 

Pepys, the prince of gossips, gives an edifying picture of 
the presence chamber in this palace, when the queens of the 
two Charleses were there together, a little after the Kestora- 
tion: 

" Meeting Mr. Pierce the chyrurgeon," says he, " he took me into 
Somerset House, and there carried me into the Queene-mother's 
presence chamber, where she was with our own queene sitting on her 
left hand, whom I did never see before, and though she be not very 
charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look, which is 
pleasing. Here I also saw Madame Castlemaine; and, which pleased 
me most, Mr. Crofts, the King's bastard, a most pretty sparke of 
about fifteen years old, who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady 
Castlemaine, and is always with her ; and, I hear, the queenes both 
are mighty kind to him. By and by, in comes the King, and anon the 
duke and his duchesse ; so that they being all together, was such a 
sight, as I never could almost have happened to see, with so much 
ease and leisure. They staid till it was dark and then went away ; 
the King and his Queene, and my Lady Castlemaine and young 
Crofts, in one coach, and the rest in other coaches. Here were great 
stores of great ladies, but very few handsome. The King and Queene 
were very merry ; and he would have made the Queene-mother 
believe that his Queene was with child, and said that she said so, 
and the young Queene answered, 'You lye;' which was the first 
English word that I ever heard her say : which made the King good 
sport."* 

After this we shall not wonder at the following: — 
"30th (Dec, 1662). Visited Mrs. Ferrer and staid talking with 
her a good while, there being a little proud, ugly, talking little lady 
there, that was much crying up the Queene-mother's court at 
Somerset House above our own Queen e's ; there being before her no 
allowance of laughing and the mirth that is at others ; and, indeed, 
it is observed that the greatest court now-a-days is there." f 

The following print represents Old Somerset House, as it 
appeared in the reign of Charles II. We have seen, but in 
vain endeavoured to procure for this book, a scarce one by 
Hollar, in which the towers in the back ground mark out the 
front in the Strand, and a tall May-pole to the right was the 
May-pole of John Clarges. The front, looking on the river, 
was added by Charles II. Inigo Jones was the architect. 
In Hollar's print it gives us a taste of the banqueting room 
at Whitehall in its elevation, and in the harmonies of the 
windows and pilasters, Below is a portico ; and there is 
another to the right. The chapel, with an enclosure to the 
left, was the Catholic one; the houses by it, the cloisters of 

* Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., 2nd edition, vol. i., p. 309. 

t Id., p. 357. 



OLD SOMERSET HOUSE. 1G7 

the Capuchins. There was a figure walking in the chapel 
garden, whom, by his gesticulating arm, we might imagine 
to be the queen's confessor, studying his to-morrow's sermon, 
or thinking how he shall get the start of the king's chaplain 
in saying grace. A curious scene of this kind is worth 
extracting. " Once," Mr. D'Israeli informs us, "when the 
king and queen were dining together in the presence, Hacket 
being to say grace, the queen's confessor would have antici- 




pated him, and an indecorous race was run between the 
Catholic priest and the Protestant chaplain*, till the latter 
shoved him aside, and the king pulling the dishes to him, 
the carvers performed their office. Still the confessor, stand- 
ing by the queen, was on the watch to be before Hacket for 
the after-grace, but Hacket again got the start. The con- 
fessor, however, resounded the grace louder than the chaplain, 
and the king, in great passion, instantly rose, taking the 
queen by the hand." The bowling-green that we read of is 
probably between the two rows of trees to the right, in front 
of the right portico (the left, if considered from the house). 
The garden is in the most formal style of the parterre, 
where . 

' f each alley has its brother, 

And half the platform just reflects the other ;'* 
a style, however, not without its merits, particularly in 
admitting so many walks among the flowers, and inviting a 
pace up and down between the trees. Milton, though he 
made a different garden for his Eden, spoke of "trim 
gardens," as enjoyed by " retired leisure." In this back 



168 NEW SOMERSET HOUSE. 

front were the apartments of the court. The scene we have 
just been reading in Pepys must have passed in one of them. 
Here Charles the First's widow lived with her supposed 
'husband, the Earl of St. Albans ; though she was not so 
constant to the place as Waller prophesied she would be. 
She had been used to too much power as a queen, and found 
she had too little as a dowager. Poor Catherine remained as 
long as she could. She lived here till she returned to 
Portugal, in the reign of William III. Speaking of Waller, 
we must not quit the premises without noticing a catastrophe 
that befel him at the water-gate, or Somerset-stairs (also, by 
the way, the work of Inigo Jones). Waller, according to 
Aubrey, had but " a tender weak body, but was always very 

temperate." (we know not who this is) " made him 

damnable drunk at Somerset House, where, at the water 
stayres, he fell down, and had a cruel fall. T was a pity to 
use such a sweet swan so inhumanly."* Waller, who, not- 
withstanding his weak body, lived to be old, was a water- 
drinker; but he had a poet's wine in his veins, and was 
excellent company. Saville said, " that nobody should keep 
him company without drinking, but Ned Waller." 

Subsequently to Catherine's departure, old Somerset House 
was chiefly used as a residence for princes from other countries 
when on a visit. It was pulled down towards the end of the 
last century, and the present structure erected by Sir William 
Chambers, but left unfinished. The unfinished part, which 
is towards the east, is now in a state of completion, as the 
King's College. The only memorial remaining of the old 
palace and its outhouses is in the wall of a house in the Strand, 
where the sign of a lion still survives a number of other 
signs, noticed in a list made at the time, and common at that 
period to houses of all descriptions. 

The area of New Somerset House occupies a large space 
of ground, the basement of the back-front being in the river. 
Three sides of it are appropriated to a variety of public offices, 
connected with trade, commerce, and civil economy; and the 
front was lately dignified by the occupancy of the Eoyal and 
Antiquarian Societies and the Royal Academy of Painting. 
The structure was an ambitious one on the part of the 
architect, and upon the whole is elegant but timid. There is 
a look of fragility in it. It has the extent, but not the 
* Lives and Letters, as above. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 169 

majesty, of a national emporium. Rules are violated in some 
instances for the sake of trifles, as is the case of pillars 
*' standing on nothing and supporting nothing ; " and in 
others, it would seem out of a dread of the result, as in the 
instance of the huge basement over the water, supporting a 
cupola, which is petty in the comparison. Sir William did 
well in wishing to have an imposing front towards the river; 
but he might have had another towards the Strand, nobler 
than the present one. The lower part is nothing better than 
a pillared coach way. However, the front of the story is, 
perhaps, the best part of the whole building. It present a 
graceful harmony in the proportions. 

The Eoyal Society, which originated in the college rooms 
of Dr. Wilkins, afterwards bishop of Chester, met, when it 
was incorporated, at Old Gresham College in Aldersgate 
Street ; then at Arundel House (on account of the fire) ; then 
returned to Gresham College; and, after a variety of other 
experiments upon lodging, was settled by the late king in 
New Somerset House. This society, on its foundation, was 
much ridiculed by the wits. Though its ends were great, it 
naturally busied itself with little things; pragmatical and 
pedantic persons naturally enough got mixed up with it; 
some of its members had foibles of enthusiasm and pedantry, 
which were easily confounded with their capacities ; and the 
jokes were most likely encouraged by the king (Charles II.), 
who, though fond of scientific experiments, and wearing a 
grave face in presence of the learned body (of which he 
declared himself a member), was not a man to forego such an 
opportunity of jesting. Wilkins wrote a book to show that 
a man might go to the moon; and the ethical common-places 
of Boyle (who was as great a natural philosopher as he was a 
poor moralist) were the origin of Swift's Essays on the Tritical 
Faculties of the Mind. Then there was the good Evelyn 
with his hard words, wondering sentimentally at every thing; 
and jolly Pepys marvelling like Sancho Panza. The readers 
of Pepy's Diary have been surprised at his not liking 
Hudibras. Perhaps one reason was, that Butler was the 
greatest of the jesters against the society. It was impossible 
not to laugh at the jokes, in which he charges them with 
attempting to 

" Search the moon by her cvvn light j 
To take an inventory of all 
Her real estate and personal j— 



170 SATIRE ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 

To measure wind, and weigh the air, 
And turn a circle to a square ; 
And in the "braying of an ass, 
Find out the treble and the bass ; 
If mares neigh alto, and a cow 
In double diapason low." * 

Evelyn got angry, and pretended to be calm. Cowley ex- 
pressed his anger with a generous indignation. The follow- 
ing passage in his Ode to the Society concludes with a fine, 
appropriate simile. " Mischief and true dishonour," says he, 

" fall on those 

Who would to laughter and to scorn expose 

So virtuous and so noble a design, 

So human for its use, for knowledge so divine. 

The things which these proud men despise and call 

Impertinent, and vain, and small, 

Those smallest things of Nature let me know, 

Rather than all their greatest actions do ! 

Whoever would deposed Truth advance 

Into the throne usurped from it, 
Must feel at first the blows of Ignorance, 

And the sharp points of envious Wit. 
So, when, by various turns of the celestial dance 

In many thousand years 

A star, so long unknown, appears, 
Though Heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, 
It troubles and alarms the world below, 
Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show." f 

Perhaps a part of the jealousy against the Eoyal Society 
arose from a notion which has since become not uncommon, 
that bodies of this nature, incorporated by kings, are calcu- 
lated rather to limit inquiry, than to enlarge it. Without 
stopping to discuss this point, we shall merely observe, that 
the real greatness of all such bodies, like those of nations 
themselves, must arise from the greatness of individuals ; and 
that whether the bodies give any lustre to them or not, there 
is no denying that the individuals give lustre to the bodies. 
When Sir Isaac Newton became president, jesting ceased. 

It is pleasant to think, while passing Somerset House, in 
the midst of the noise of a great thoroughfare, that philoso- 
phical speculation is, perhaps, going on within those graceful 
walls ; that in the midst of all sorts of new things, sight is not 
lost of the venerable beauties of old ; and that art, as well as 
philosophy, is considering what it shall do for our use and 

* See three Poems in his Genuine Remains.— Chalmers's British 
Poets, vol. viii., p. 187. 
f British Poets, vol. vii., p. 101. 



THE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY. 171 

entertainment. The Antiquarian Society originated as far 
back as the sixteenth century (about the year 1580), and held 
its first sittings in a room in the Herald's College ; but it did 
not receive a charter till the year 1751. Neither Elizabeth 
nor James would give it one, fearful, perhaps, of bringing up 
discussions on matters connected with politics and religion 
Elizabeth has now become one of the most interesting of its 
heroines. There is no society, we think, more likely to in- 
crease with age, and to outgrow half-witted objection. The 
growth of time adds daily to its stock ; and as reflecting men 
become interested in behalf of ages to come, they naturally 
turn with double sympathy towards the periods that have 
gone by, and to the multitudes of beating hearts that have 
become dust. We should like to see the society in a venerable 
building of its own, raised in some quiet spot, with trees 
about it, and with painted windows reflecting light through 
old heraldry. 

The Royal Academy of Painters, now removed to Trafalgar 
Square, first met in Saint Martin's Lane, under the title of 
the Society of Artists of Great Britain. They had a division 
among them, which gave rise to the establishment as it now 
stands ; and are a flourishing body, we believe, in point of 
funds. Of the deceased members who have done them honour, 
we shall speak when we come to their abodes. 

The Turk's Head Coffeehouse, near Somerset House, was 
frequented by Dr. Johnson. 

In a lodging opposite Somerset House, died the facetious 
Dr. King, whom we have mentioned in speaking of Doctors' 
Commons. He had been residing in the house of a friend in 
the garden-grounds between Lambeth and Vauxhall, where 
he stuck so close to his books and bottle, that he began to 
decline with the autumn, and shut himself up from his friends. 
Lord Clarendon, who resided in Somerset House, and was his 
relation, sent his sister to fetch him to a lodging he had pre- 
pared for him over the way, where he died before the lapse of 
many hours, while all the world were busy with the meats 
and mince-pies he had so often celebrated ; for it was 
Christmas-day. Dr. King was the author of an Art of Cookery, 
in which he pleasantly bantered a learned Kitchener of his 
time ; though no man had a livelier relish of their subjects 
than he. But he wished the relish to be lively in others. At 
least, he wished them to be leviter in modo, if graviter in re. 
Though occasionally coarse, he had the right style of banter, 



172 THE SAVOY. 

and was of use to the Tories. In return, they would have 
been of use to him, if his habits would have let them. Swift 
procured him the place of Gazetteer ; but he soon got rid 
of it. 

The precinct called the Savoy was anciently the seat of 
Peter, Earl of Savoy, who came into England to visit his niece 
Eleanor, Queen to Henry III. It is not known whether the 
house was built or appointed for him, but on his death it 
became the property of the queen, who gave it to her second 
son Edmund, afterwards Earl of Lancaster ; and from his 
time the Savoy was reckoned part and parcel of the earldom 
and honour of Lancaster, afterwards the duchy. Henry VII. 




converted the palace into an hospital for the poor ; and it 
remained so till the time of Charles II.; though the master 
and other officers, by an abuse which grew into a custom, 
appear to have had no regular inmates, except themselves. 
The poor were to apply, as it might happen ; and what they 
got depended on the generosity of the master. In answer to a 
question put by Government in the reign of Queen Anne, it 
was stated by the lawyer and four chaplains, that " the statutes 
relating to the reception of the poor had not been observed 
within the memory of man."* Charles II. put wounded 
soldiers and sailors into the hospital ; and since his time it 
appears to have been used for the reception of soldiers and 
prisoners. Latterly, it was a prison for deserters. 

The Savoy was the scene of a conference in Charles II. 's 
* Londinium Bedivivum, vol. iv., p. 410. 



SAVOY CHAPEL. 173 

reign, between the Church and the Presbyterians, in which 
possession was proved to be nine points of the Gospel, as well 
as law. The Presbyterians thought so when it was their turn 
to rule, and would have thought so again ; and the progress 
of genuine Christianity has been a gainer by the mild sway of 
the Church of England. 

In the chapel was buried old Gawen Douglas, the Chaucer 
of Scotland ; and Anne Killegrew, celebrated by Dryden's ode 
for her poetry and painting. She was the daughter of one of 
the masters, Dr. Henry Killegrew, brother of the famous 
jester, and himself a man of talent. 

Mrs. Anne Killegrew, 

A grace for beauty, and a muse for wit, 
had probably the honour, some day, of dining with her 
washerwoman's daughter, in the guise of Duchess of 
Albemarle ; for John Clarges, the blacksmith, who lived in 
the Savoy, had a wife who was a washerwoman, and the 
washerwoman had a daughter, who took linen to Monk, when 
he was in the Tower, and married him. It is not commonly 
known that the validity of this marriage was contested. 
Upon the trial of an action at law between the representatives 
of Monk and Clarges, some curious particulars, says an article 
in the Gentleman's Magazine, came out respecting the family 
of the duchess. 

"It appeared that she was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier, 
in the Savoy, and farrier to Colonel Monk, in 1632. She was married 
in the church of St. Lawrence Pountney, to Thomas Eatford, son of 
Thomas Eatford, late a farrier, servant to Prince Charles, and resident 
in the Mews. She had a daughter who was born in 1634, and died in 
1638. Her husband and she ' lived at the Three Spanish Gypsies, in 
the New Exchange, and sold wash-balls, powder, gloves, and such 
things, and she taught girls plain work. About 1647, she, being a 
sempstress to Colonel Monk, used to carry him linen.' In 1648 her 
father and mother died. In 1649, she and her husband 'fell out and 
parted.' But no certificate from any parish register appears, reciting 
his burial. In 1652, she was married in the church of St. George, 
Southwark, to 'General George Monk;' and in the following year 
was delivered of a son, Christopher, (afterwards the second and last 
Duke of Albemarle), who was suckled by Honour Mills, who sold 
apples, herbs, oysters, &c. One of the plaintiff's witnesses swore, 
'that a little before the sickness, Thomas Eatford demanded and 
received of him the sum of twenty shillings; that his wife saw Eatford 
again after the sickness, and a second time after the Duke and 
Duchess of Albemarle were dead.' A woman swore, 'she saw him 
on the day his wife (then called Duchess of Albemarle) was put into 
her coffin, which was after the death of the duke her second husband, 
who died the 3rd of January, 1669-70.' And a third witness swore. 



174 DUCHESS OF ALBEMAELE. 

that he saw Ratford about July, 1660.' In opposition to this evidence, 
it was alleged, that ' all along, during the lives of Duke George and 
Duke Christopher, this matter was never questioned,' that the latter 
was universally received as only son of the former, and that ' this 
matter had been thrice before tried at the bar of the King's Bench, 
and the defendant had three verdicts.' A witness swore that he 
owed Ratford five or six pounds, which he had never demanded. 
And a man, who had married a cousin to the Duke of Albemarle, 
had been told by his wife, that Ratford died five or six years before the 
duke married. Lord Chief Justice Holt told the jury, 'If you are 
certain that Duke Christopher was born while Thomas Ratford was 
living, you must find for the plaintiff. If you believe he was born 
after Ratford was dead, or that nothing appears what became of him 
after Duke George married his wife, you must find for the defendant.' 
A verdict was given for the defendant, who was only son to Sir 
Thomas Clarges, knight, brother to the illustrious duchess in question, 
who was created a baronet October 30, 1674, and was ancestor to the 
baronets of his name."* 

It does not appear on which of these accounts the jury 
found a verdict for the defendant — whether because Ratford 
was dead, or because nothing had been heard of him ; so that 
the duchess, after all, might have been no duchess. However, 
she carried it with as high a hand as if she had never been 
anything else, and Monk had been a blacksmith. There are 
some amusing notices of her in Pepys. 

"8th (March, 1661-2). At noon, Sir W. Batten, Col. Slingsby, 
and I, by coach to the Tower, to Sir John Robinson's, to dinner, 
where great good cheer. High company, and among others the 
Duchess of Albemarle, who is ever a plain homely dowdy."f 

"9th (Dec. 1665). My Lord Brouncker and I dined with the 
Duke of Albemarle. At table, the duchess, a very ill-looked woman, 
complaining of her lord's going to sea next year, said these cursed 
words: — 'If my lord had been a coward, he had gone to sea no more; 
it may be then he might have been excused, and made an ambassador,' 
(meaniog my Lord Sandwich). This made me mad, and I believe 
she perceived my countenance change, and blushed herself very 
much. I was in hopes others had not minded it, but my Lord 
Brouncker, after we came away, took notice of the words to me with 
displeasure." % 

Lord Sandwich, the famous admiral, who has such light 
repute with posterity, was a relation of Pepys, and much con- 
nected with him in affairs. There does not appear to have 
been the least foundation for the duchess's charge ; except, 
perhaps, that Sandwich had brains enough to know the 
danger which he braved, while Monk knew nothing but how 
to fight and lie. 

* Gentleman's Magazine for 1793,, p. 88. 

f Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 182, 

J Vol. ii., p. 348. 



DUCHESS OF ALBEMARLE. 175 

"4th (Nov. 1666)." Pepys says that Mr. Cooling tells him, "the 
Duke of Albemarle is grown a drunken sot, and drinks with nobody 
but Troutbecke, whom nobody else will keep company with. Of 
whom he told me this story; that once the Duke of Albemarle in his 
drink taking notice, as of a wonder, that Nan Hide should ever come 
to be Duchess of York: 'Nay/ says Troutbecke, ' ne'er wonder at 
that, for if you will give me another bottle of wine, I will tell you as 
great, if not greater, miracle.' And what was that, but that our 
dirty Besse (meaning his duchess) should come to be Duchess of 
Albemarle."* 

"4th (April, 1667). I find the Duke of Albemarle at dinner with 
sorry company, some of his officers of the army; dirty dishes and a 
nasty wife at table, and bad meat, of which I made but an ill dinner. 
Colonel Howard asking how the Prince (Rupert) did (in the last 
fight); the Duke of Albemarle answering, 'Pretty well,' the other 
replied, 'but not so well as to go to sea again.' — 'How!' says the 
duchess, ' what should he go for, if he were well, for there are no 
ships for him to command? And so you have brought your hogs to 
a fair market/ said she."f 

"29th (March 1667-8). I do hear by several, that Sir W. Pen's 
going to sea do dislike the Parliament mightily, and that they have 
revived the Committee of Miscarriages, to find something to prevent 
it ; and that he being the other day with the Duke of Albemarle, to 
ask his opinion touching his going to sea, the duchess overheard and 
came into him ; and asked W. Pen how he durst have the confidence 
to go to sea again to tbe endangering of the nation, when he knew 
himself such a coward as he was; which, if true, is very severe." J 

The habit of charging cowardice against the first officers of 
the time, which was not confined to the Duchess, is charac- 
teristic of the grossness of that period, the refinements of 
which were entirely artificial and modish. No people talked 
or acted more grossly than the finest gentlemen of the day, or 
believed more ill of one another ; and it was not to be ex- 
pected that the uneducated should be behindhand with them. 
The Duchess of Albemarle is supposed to have had a con- 
siderable hand in the Restoration. She was a great loyalist, 
and Monk was afraid of her ; so that it is likely enough she 
influenced his gross understanding, when it did not exactly 
know what to be at. Aubrey says, that her mother was one 
of the " five women barbers." Plow these awful personages 
came up we know not — but he has quoted a ballad upon 
them : — 

" Did you ever hear the like, 
Or ever hear the fame, 
Of five women barbers, 

That lived in Drury Lane?"§ 

* Memoirs and Correspondence, as above, vol. iii., p. 75. 

f Id., p. 185. J Vol. iv., p. 81. 

§ Granger's Biographical History of England, 1824, vol. v., p. 356. 



176 DURHAM PLACE. ... / 

After all, the father, John Clarges, must have been a man 
of substance in his trade, to be enabled to set up the enor- 
mous May-pole which we see in the picture. But this did 
not prevent the daughter from growing up vulgar and foul- 
mouthed, and a very different person from the Belles Ferro- 
nieres of old. 

The Savoy, on the one side, with its Gothic gate and flint 
wall, and the splendid mansion called Exeter House on the 
other, appear in former times to have narrowed the highway 
hereabouts, as much as Exeter 'Change did lately. 

At the corner of Beaufort Buildings nourished Mr. Lillie, 
the perfumer so often mentioned in the Tatler. He was secre- 
tary to Mr. Bickerstaff's Court of Honour, in Shire Lane, 
where people had actions brought against them for pulling out 
their watches while their superiors were talking ; and for 
brushing feathers off a gentleman's coat, with a cane ".value 
fivepence." Lillie published two volumes of Contributions, 
of which the Tatler had made no use. "We believe they had 
no merit. In Beaufort Buildings lived Aaron Hill, and at 
one time Fielding. 

Southampton Street, a little to the west, on the other side of 
the way, has been much inhabited by wits and theatrical 
people. Congreve once lived there, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and 
Garrick. It was called Southampton Street from the noble 
family of that title, who are allied to the Bedford family, the 
proprietors. 

On the ground of Cecil and Salisbury Streets, opposite 
Southampton Street, stood the mansion of Eobert Cecil, first 
Earl of Salisbury, the cunning son of a wise father. It was 
he who, contriving to keep up to the last his interest with the 
queen Elizabeth, and to oust his rivals, Essex and others, 
was the first to make secret terms with her successor James, 
and to prepare the way for his reception in England : of which, 
perhaps, Elizabeth was aware, when she lay moaning on the 
ground. 

Where the Adelphi now stands, was Durham Place, ori- 
ginally a palace of the Bishops of Durham, who resigned it to 
Henry VIII. Henry made it the scene of magnificent tourna- 
ments. The Lord High Admiral Seymour caused the Mint 
to be established in this house, with a view to coin money for 
his designs on the throne. It was afterwards inhabited by 
Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, who here married his son 
to Lady Jane Grey. But its most illustrious tenant w r as 



DURHAM PLACE* 177 

Raleigh, to whom it was lent by Queen Elizabeth, and who 
lived in it during the attempt made at Essex House. The 
four turrets of the mansion, under the roof of which lived 
and speculated that romantic but equivocal person, have been 
marked out in an engraving from Hollar. Durham Place, 
though it got into royal hands during the fluctuation of reli- 
gious opinions, never seems to have been reckoned out of the 
pale of the bishopric of Durham ; for Lord Pembroke bought 
it of that see in 1640, and pulled it down for the erection of 
houses on its site. 

"Be it known," says the lively Pennant, speaking of the word 
* place,' as applied to great mansions, and interpreted by him to mean 
palace, " that the word is only applicable to the habitations of princes, 
or princely persons, and that it is with all the impropriety of vanity 
bestowed on the houses of those who have luckily acquired money 
enough to pile on one another a greater quantity of stones or bricks 
than their neighbours. How many imaginary parks have been formed 
within precincts where deer were never seen ! And how many houses 
misnamed halls, which never had attached to them the privilege of a 
manor."* 

This is true ; but unless the words palazzo and piazza are 
traceable to the same root, palatium (as perhaps they are), 
place does not of necessity mean palace; and palace certainly 
does not mean exclusively the habitation of princes or princely 
persons (that is to say, supposing princeliness to exclude 
riches,) for in Italy, whence it comes, any large mansion may 
be called a palace ; and many old palaces there were built 
by merchants. Palatium,- it is true, with the old Eomans, 
though it may have originally meant any house on Mount 
Palatine, yet in consequence of that place becoming the court, 
end of the city, and containing the imperial palace, may have 
come ultimately to mean only a princely residence. Ovid 
uses it in that sense in his Metamorphoses, f But custom is 
everything in these matters. Place is now used as a variety 
of term, either for a large house or street. Perhaps in both 

* Pennant, ut supra, p. 144. 

f Where he likens Jupiter's house in the Milky Way to the palace 
of Augustus : — 

" Hie locus est, quern, si verbis audacia detur, 
Haud timeam magni dixisse Palatia cceli." 

Lib. i. v. 175. 
Which Sandys, by a felicitous conceit in the taste of his age (and 
of Ovid too), has transferred to the palace of Charles the First, and 
rendered still more applicable to the Milky Way: — 

" This glorious roofe I would not doubt to call, 
Had I but boldness giv'n me, Heaven's White-Hall." 



178 THE NEW EXCHANGE. 

cases it ought to imply something of the look of a palace, of 
at least an openness of aspect analogous to that of a square — 
square in England, corresponding with place, piazza, and placa 
on the Continent. The Piazza in Covent Garden, properly 
means the place itself, and not the portico. 

" To the north of Durham Place, fronting the street," says Pennant, 
" stood the New Exchange, which was built under the auspices of our 
monarch in 1608, out of the rubbish of the old stables of Durham 
House. The King, Queen, and Koyal Family, honoured the opening 
with their presence, and named it Britaine's Burse. It was built 
somewhat on the model of the Royal Exchange, with cellars beneath, 
a walk above, and rows of shops over that, rilled chiefly with milliners, 
sempstresses, and the like. This was a fashionable place of resort. 
In 1654, a fatal affair happened here. Mr. Gerard, a young gentle- 
man, at that time engaged in a plot against Cromwell, was amusing 
himself in a walk beneath, when he was insulted by Don Pantaleon 
de Saa, brother to the Ambassador of Portugal, who, disliking the 
return he met with, determined on revenge. He came there the next 
day with a set of bravoes, who, mistaking another gentleman for 
Mr. Gerard, instantly put him to death, as he was walking with his 
sister in one hand and his mistress in the other. Don Pa?italeon was 
tried, and with impartial justice condemned to the axe. Mr. Gerard, 
who about the same time was detected in the conspiracy, was likewise 
condemned to die. By singular chance, both the rivals suffered on the 
scaffold, within a few hours of each other : Mr. Gerard with intrepid 
dignity ; the Portuguese with all the pusillanimity of an assassin. 

"Above stairs," continues Pennant, "sat, in the character of a 
milliner, the reduced Duchess of Tyrconnel, wife to Eichard Talbot, 
Lord Deputy of Ireland, under James II. ; a bigoted Papist, and fit 
instrument of the designs of the infatuated prince, who had created 
him Earl before his abdication, and after that, Duke of Tyrconnel. 
A female, suspected to have been his duchess, after his death, sup- 
ported herself for a few days (till she was known and otherwise 
provided for) by the little trade of this place; but had delicacy 
enough to wish not to be detected. She sat in a white mask, and a 
white dress, and was known by the name of the White Widow. This 
Exchange has long since given way to a row of good houses, with 
uniform front, engraved in Mr. Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 
which form a part of the street."* 

The houses in the quarter behind these, built by the Earl 
of Pembroke, made way, sixty years back, for the present 
handsome set of buildings called the Adelphi, from the Messrs. 
Adam, brothers, who built it."}* The principal front faces the 

* Pennant, p. 147. 

f It was a joke, probably invented, against a late festive alderman, 
that some lover of Terence, at a public dinner, having toasted two 
royal brothers, who were present, under the title of the Adelphi (the 
Greek word for "brothers"), the Alderman said, that as they were 
on the subject of streets, " he would beg leave to propose " Finsbury 
Square.' " 



MRS. GARRICK. 179 

Thames, and is almost the only public walk left for the inha- 
bitants of London on the river side. The centre house was 
purchased when new, by Garrick in 1771, and was his town 
house for the rest of his life. He died there about nine years 
after ; but Mrs. Garrick possessed it till a late period. 
Mrs. Garrick had been a dancer in her youth, with a name as 
vernal as need be — Mademoiselle Violette : she died a vener- 
able old lady, at the age of ninety odd. Boswell has recorded 
a delightful day spent with Johnson and others at her house, 
the first time she re-opened it after Garrick's death. Sir 
Joshua Eeynolds was there, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Boscawen, and 
others. a She looked well," says Boswell ; " talked of her 
husband with complacency; and while she cast her eyes at 
his portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, 
that ' death was now the most agreeable object to her.'"* It 
is no dishonour to her, that her constitution was too good for 
her melancholy. She spoke enthusiastically of her husband 
to the last, and used to decide on theatrical subjects/ by right 
of being his representative. 

On the same terrace had lived their common friend 
Beauclerc. On coming away after the party just mentioned, 
Boswell tells us that Johnson and he stopped a little while by 
the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames ; " and I said 
to him," says Boswell, " with some emotion, that I was now 
thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the 
buildings behind us, Beauclerc and Garrick." " Ay, sir," 
said he tenderly, " and two such friends as cannot be sup- 
plied." * 

When Beauclerc was labouring under the illness that car- 
ried him off, Johnson said to Boswell, in a faltering voice, 
that he " would walk to the extent of the diameter of the 
earth to save him." It does not appear what Beauclerc had 
in his nature to excite this tenderness ; but it is observable, 
that Johnson had a kind of speculative regard for rakes and 
men of the town, if he thought them not essentially vicious. 
He seemed willing to regard them as evidences of the natural 
virtue of all men, bad as well as good, and of the excuse 
furnished for irregularity by animal spirits. It is not impos- 
sible even that he might have thought them rather conven- 
tionally than abstractedly vicious. He had a similar regard 
for Hervey, a great rake, who was very kind to him. " Sir," 
said he, " if you call a dog ' Hervey,' I shall love him." At 

* Boswell, iv., p. 102. f Id., p. 106. 

N 2 



180 LANGTON AND BEAUCLERC. 

the same time it is not to be forgotten, that these rakes were 
fine gentlemen and men of birth ; representatives, in some 
respect, of the license assumed by authority. Beauclerc, 
however, like Hervey, had a taste for better things than he 
practised, and could love scrupulous men. Boswell has given 
an interesting account of his first intimacy with Johnson. 
Langton and Beauclerc had become intimate at Oxford. 
"Their opinions and mode of life," we are told, "were so 
different, that it seemed utterly impossible they should at all 
agree ;" but Beauclerc " had so ardent a love of literature, so 
acute an understanding, such elegance of manners, and so 
well discerned the excellent qualities of Mr. Langton, a gentle- 
man eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inex- 
haustible fund of entertaining conversation, that they became 
intimate friends." 

"Johnson, soon after this acquaintance began, passed a consider- 
able time at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton 
should associate so much with one who had the character of being 
loose, both in his principles and practice, but by degrees, he himself 
was fascinated. Mr. Beauclerc' s being of the St. Albans family, and 
having, in some particulars, a resemblance to Charles the Second, 
contributed, in Johnson's imagination, to throw a lustre upon his 
other qualities; and, in a short time, the moral, pious Johnson, and 
the gay, dissipated Beauclerc were companions. 'What a coalition!' 
said Garrick, when he heard of this: 'I shall have my old friend to 
bail out of the round-house.' But I can bear testimony that it was 
a very agreeable association. Beauclerc was too polite, and valued 
learning and wit too much, to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity 
or licentiousness ; and Johnson delighted in the good qualities of 
Beauclerc, and hoped to correct the evil. Innumerable were the 
scenes in which Johnson was amused by these young men. Beau- 
clerc could take more liberty with him than any body with whom I 
ever saw him ; but, on the other hand, Beauclerc was not spared by 
his respectable companion, when reproof was proper. Beauclerc had 
such a propensity to satire, that at one time, Johnson said to him, 
• You never open your mouth but with intention to give pain, and 
you have often given me pain, not from the power of what you said, 
out from seeing your intention.' At another time, applying to him, 
Mth a slight alteration, a line of Pope, he said — 

' Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools' — 
Every thing thou dost shows the one, and every thing thou say'st the 
other.' At another time he said to him, ' Thy body is all vice, and 
thy mind all virtue.' Beauclerc not seeming to relish the compli- 
ment, Johnson said, 'Nay, sir, Alexander the Great, marching in 
triumph into Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said 
to him.' "* 

The streets in the Adelphi — John, Robert, Adam, &c. — are 

* Boswell, vol. i., p. 225. 



STREET NOMENCLATURE. 181 

named from the builders. In this instance, the names are well 
bestowed ; but the " fond attempt," on the part of bricklayers 
and builders in general to give a "deathless lot" to their 
names in the same way, is very idle. Wherever we go now- 
a-days, among the new buildings, especially in the suburbs, 
we meet with names that nobody knows anything about, nor 
ever will know. Probably, as knowledge increases, this custom 
will go out. With this exception, streets in the British metro- 
polis have hitherto been named after royalty or nobility, or 
from local circumstances, or from saints. Saints went out 
with popery. The reader of the Spectator will recollect the 
dilemma which Sir Eoger de Coverley underwent in his youth, 
from not knowing whether to ask for Marylebone or Saint 
Marylebone. In Paris they have streets named after men of 
letters. There is the Quai de Voltaire ; and one of the most 
frequented thoroughfares in that metropolis, for it contains the 
Post-Office, is Jean Jacques Rousseau Street. It is not unlikely 
that a similar custom will take place in England before long. 
A nobleman, eminent for his zeal in behalf of the advance- 
ment of society, has called a road in his neighbourhood, 
Addison Road.* 

In John Street, Adelphi, are the rooms of the Society for the 
Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. This 
society originated in 1753, at the suggestion of Mr. Shipley, 
an artist, and, as the title implies, is very miscellaneous in its 
object ; perhaps too much so to make sufficient impression. It 
gives rewards for discoveries of all sorts, and for performances 
of youth in the fine arts. It is, however, one of those combi- 
nations of zealous and intelligent men, which have marked the 
progress of latter times, and which will have an incalculable 
effect on posterity. Its great room is adorned with the cele- 
brated pictures of Mr. Barry, which he painted in order to 
refute the opinion that Englishmen had no genius for the 
higher department of art, no love of music, &c, nor a proper 
relish of anything, " even life itself." The statement of these 
positions was not so discreet as the paintings were clever. 
Mr. Barry was one of those impatient, self-willed men who, 
with a portion of genuine power, think it greater than it is, 
and will not take the pains to make themselves masters of 
their own weapons. His pictures in the Adelphi, which are 
illustrations of the progress of society, are striking, ingenious, 
with great elegance here and there, and now and then an 

* Near Holland Jlouse, Kensington. Addison die4 in that house. 



182 YORK HOUSE. 

evidence of the highest feeling ; as in the awful pity of the 
retributive angel who presides over the downfall of the wicked 
and tyrannical. But the colouring is bad and "foxy;" his 
Elysium is deformed with the heterogeneous dresses of all ages, 
William Penn talking in a wig and hat with Lycurgus, &c. 
(which, however philosophically such things might be re- 
garded in another world, are not fitly presented to the eye in 
this) ; and by way of disproving the bad taste of the English 
in music, he has put Dr. Burney in a coat and toupee, floating 
among the water nymphs! The consequence is, that although 
these pictures are, perhaps, the best ever exhibited together 
in England by one artist, they fall short of what he intended 
to establish by them, as far as England is concerned. 

Between Adam Street and George Street, on the other side 
of the Strand, is Bedford Street, the site of an old mansion of 
the Earls and Dukes of Bedford. 

With George Street commence the precincts of an ancient 
"Inn," or palace, originally belonging to the Bishops of 
Norwich ; then to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; then to 
the Archbishops of York, from whom it was called York 
House ; then to the Crown, who let it to Lord Chancellor 
Egerton and to Bacon ; then to the Duke of Buckingham, 
the favourite, who rebuilt it with great magnificence, and at 
whose death it was let to the Earl of Northumberland; and 
finally to the second Duke of Buckingham, who pulled it 
down and converted it into the present streets and alleys, the 
names of which contain his designation at full length, even to 
the sign of the genitive case, for there is an " Of Alley :" so 
that we have George, Villiers, Duke, Of, Buckingham. 

Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was the man who, on his 
marriage with Henry VIII.'s sister, appeared at a tourna- 
ment on a horse that had a cloth half frieze and half gold, 
with that touching motto — 

Cloth of gold, do not thou despise, 
Though thou be matched with cloth of frize: 
Cloth of frize, be not thou too bold, 
Though thou be matched with cloth of gold. 

Bacon belongs to Gray's Inn, and the second Duke of 
Buckingham to Wallingford House, where he chiefly re- 
sided (on the site of the present Admiralty) : but the reader, 
who should go down Buckingham Street, and contemplate the 
spot which Inigo Jones and the trees have beautified, will not 
fail to be struck with the many different spirits that have 



WATER-GATE AT YORK STAIRS. 



183 



passed through this spot — the romantic Suffolk ; the correct 
Egerton ; the earth-moving Bacon ; the first Buckingham with 
a spirit equal to his fortunes; the second, witty but selfish, 
who lavished them away ; and all the visitors, of so many 
different qualities, which these men must have had, crowding 
or calmly moving to the gate across the water, in quiet or 
in jollity, clients, philosophers, poets, courtiers, mistresses, 
gallant masques, the romance of Charles the First's reign, 
and the gaudy revelry of Charles II. A little spot remains, 
with a few trees, and a graceful piece of art, and the river 
flowing as calmly as meditation. 

A\ ft 




WATER-GATE OP YORK HOUSE. 

The only vestige now remaining of the splendid mansion of 
the Buckinghams is the Water-Gate at the end of Buckingham 
Street, called York Stairs,* and built by Inigo Jones. It has 

* " York Stairs," says the author of the ' Critical Reviews of Public 
Buildings,' quoted in ' Brayley's London and Middlesex,' " form un- 
questionably the most perfect piece of building that does honour to 
Inigo Jones ; it is planned in so exquisite a taste, formed of such equal 
and harmonious parts, and adorned with such proper and elegant 
decorations, that nothing can be censured or added. It is at once 
happy in its situation beyond comparison, and fancied in a style exactly 
suited to that situation. The rock-work, or rustic, can never be 
better introduced than in buildings by the side of water; and, indeed, 



184 SQUABBLE BETWEEN THE SPANISH 

been much admired, and must have admitted, in its time, the 
entrance of many extraordinary persons. 

York Buildings affords us another name, not unworthy to 
be added to the most useful and delightful of these, Richard 
Steele, who lived here just before he retired into Wales. The 
place in his time was celebrated for a concert-room. "We must 
not omit the termination of a curious dispute at the gate of 
York House, to which Pepys was a witness. 

" 30th (September 1661). This morning up by moonshine, at five 
o'clock," (here was one of the great secrets of the animal spirits of 
those times), "to Whitehall, to meet Mr. More at the Privy Seale, 
and there I heard of a fray between the two embassadors of Spaine 
and France, and that this day being the day of the entrance of an 
embassador from Sweeden, they intended to fight for the precedence. 
Our King, I heard, ordered that no Englishman should meddle in the 
business, but let them do what they would. And to that end, all the 
soldiers in town were in arms all the day long, and some of the train 
bands in the city, and a great bustle through the city all the day. 
Then we took coach (which was the business I came for) to Chelsey, 
to my Lord Privy Seale, and there got him to seal the business. 
Here I saw by daylight two very fine pictures in the gallery, that a 
little while ago I saw by night ; and did also go all over the house, 
and found it to be the prettiest contrived house that ever I saw in my 
life. So back again; and at Whitehall light, and saw the soldiers and 
people running up and down the streets. So I went to the Spanish 
embassador's and the French, and there saw great preparations on 
both sides; but the French made the most noise and ranted most, but 
the other made no stir almost at all; so that I was afraid the other 
would have too great a conquest over them. Then to the wardrobe 
and dined there; and then abroad, and in Cheapside hear, that the 
Spanish hath got the best of it, and. killed three of the French coach- 
horses and several men, and is gone through the city next to our King's 
coach; at which, it is strange to see how all the city did rejoice. And, 
indeed, we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French. But 
I, as I am in all things curious, presently got to the water side, and 
there took oars to Westminster Palace, and ran after them through 
all the dirt, and the streets full of people ; till at last, in the Mews, I 
saw the Spanish coach go with fifty drawn swords at least to guard 
it, and our soldiers shouting for joy And so I followed the coach, 
and then met it at York House, where the embassador lies; and there 
it went in with great state. So then I went to the French house, 
where I observe still, that there is no men in the world of a more 
insolent spirit where they do well, nor before they begin a matter, and 

it is a great question whether it ought to have been made use of any- 
where else. On the side next the river appear the arms of the Villiers 
family; and on the north front is inscribed their motto: Fidei Coticula 
Crux, — The Cross is the touch-stone of faith. On this side is a small 
terrace, planted with lime-trees ; the whole supported by a rate raised 
upon the houses in the neighbouring streets; and being inclosed from 
the public, forms an agreeable promenade for the inhabitants." 



AND FRENCH AMBASSADORS. 185 

more abject if they do miscarry, than these people are ; for they all 
look like dead men, and not a word among them, but shake their 
heads. The truth is, the Spaniards were not only observed to fight 
more desperately, but also they did outwitt them; first in lining their 
own harnesse with chains of iron that they could not be cut, then in 
setting their coach in the most advantageous place, and to appoint 
men to guard every one of their horses, and others for to guard the 
coach, and others the coachman. And, above all, in setting upon the 
French horses and killing them, for by that means the French were 
not able to stir. There were several men slaine of the French, and 
one or two of the Spaniards, and one Englishman by a bullet. Which 
is very observable, the French were at least four to one in number, 
and had near one hundred cases of pistols among them, and the 
Spaniards had not one gun among them, which is for their honour for 
ever, and the others' disgrace. So having been very much daubed 
with dirt, I got a coach and home; where I vexed my wife in telling 
her of this story, and pleading for the Spaniards against the French."* 

In James the Second's time, the French embassy had the 
house of their rival, and drew the town to see Popish devices 
in wax- work. 

"The fourth of April," says Evelyn (1672), " I went to see the 
fopperies of the Papists at Somerset House and York House, where 
now the French ambassador had caused to be represented our Blessed 
Saviour at the Pascal Supper with his disciples, in figures and puppets 
made as big as the life, of wax- work, curiously clad and sitting round 
a large table, the room nobly hung, and shining with innumerable 
lamps and candles ; this was exposed to all the world ; all the city 
came to see it: such liberty had the Roman Catholicks at this time 
obtained."! 

They have obtained more liberty since, and can dispense 
with these " fopperies." At least they would do well to 
think so. 

Hungerford Market takes its name from an old Wiltshire 
family, who had a mansion here in the time of Charles II., 
which they parted with, like others, to the encroachments of 
trade. It used to be an inconvenient and disagreeable place, 
little frequented, but has lately been converted into a hand- 
some market, and put an end to the monopoly of Billingsgate. 

No. 7 in Craven Street is celebrated as having been, at one 
time, the residence of Franklin. What a change along the 
shore of the Thames in a few years (for two centuries are less 
than a few in the lapse of time), from the residence of a set of 
haughty nobles, who never dreamt that a tradesman could be 
anything but a tradesman, to that of a yeoman's son, and a 
printer, who was one of the founders of a great state ! 

* Diary, vol. i., p. 221. 

f " Memoirs of John Evelyn, Esq." Second edit. vol. ii., p. 364. 



186 



NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE. 



Northumberland House is the only one remaining of all the 
great mansions which lorded it on the river side. It was 
built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of the 
famous Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the poet ; but a very 
unworthy son, except in point of capacity. He was one of 
those men, who, wanting a sense of moral beauty, are in 
every other respect wise in vain, and succeed only to become 
despised and unhappy. He was the grossest of flatterers ; 
paid court to the most opposite rivals, in the worst manner ; 
and seems to have stuck at nothing to obtain his ends. His 




OLD NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE. 

perception of what was great, extrinsically, led him to build 
this princely abode ; and his worship of success and court 
favour degraded him into an accomplice of Carr, Earl of 
Somerset. It is thought by the historians, that he died just 
in time to save him from the disgraceful consequences of the 
murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.* 

* In 1596, Northampton writes thus to Lord Burghley (Essex's 
great enemy), upon presenting to him a devotional composition. " The 
weight of your lordship's piercing judgment held me in so reverend 
an awe, as before I were encouraged by two or three of my friends, 
who had a taste, I durst not present this treatise to your view : but 
since their partiality hath made me thus bold, my own affection to 
sanctify this labour to yourself hath made me impudent." 

Yet in the year succeeding, our authority observes, he has the foi- 



NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE. 187 

Northumberland House was built upon the site of the old 
hospital of St. Mary Roncesvaux — Osborne says, with Spanish 
gold. "Part of the present mansion," says the Londinium 
Bedivivum, " is from the designs of Bernard Jansen, and the 
frontispiece or gateway from those of Gerard Christmas. 
This gateway cannot possibly be described correctly, as the 
ornaments are scattered in the utmost profusion, from the 
base to the attic, which supports a copy of Michael Angelo's 
celebrated lion. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters inclose 
eight niches on the sides, and there are a bow window and an 
open arch above the gate. The basement of the whole front 
contains fourteen niches, with ancient weapons crossed within 
them ; and the upper stories have twenty-four windows, in two 
ranges, with pierce battlements. Each wing terminates in a 
cupola, and the angles have rustic quoins. The quadrangle 
within the gate is in a better style of building, but rather 
distinguished by simplicity than grandeur ; and the garden 
next the Thames, with many trees, serves to screen the man- 
sion from those disagreeable objects which generally bound 
the shores of the river in this vast trading city." 

" Northumberland House was discovered to be on fire, Marcb 18, 
1780, at five o'clock in the morning, which raged from that hour till 
eight, when the whole front next the Strand was completely destroyed. 
Dr. Percy's apartments were consumed; but great part of his library 
escaped the general ruin."* 

We have been the more particular in laying this extract 
before our readers, because, though the house still exists, the 
public see little of it. All they behold, indeed, is the screen 
or advanced guard, which is no very fine sight, and only 
serves to narrow the way. Of the quadrangle inside the 
public know nothing ; and thousands pass every day without 

lowing passage in a letter to Essex: — "Some friend of mine means 
this day, before night, to merit my devotion and uttermost gratitude 
by seeking to do good to you ; the success whereof my prayers in the 
meantime shall recommend to that best gale of wind that may favour 
it. Your lordship, by your last purchase, hath almost enraged the 
dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba's favour by 
bringing pearls. If you could once be as fortunate in dragging old 
Leviathan (Burghley) and his cub, tortuosum colubrum (Sir Kobert 
Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of this den of mischievous 
device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that 
of Hercules." See " Memoirs of the Peers of James I." p. 240. Such 
" wise men" are the worst of fools. And here he was acting, as such 
men are apt to do, like one of the commonest fools, in saying such 
contradictory things under his own hand. 
* Vol, iv., p. 308. 



188 VIOLENCE OF LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. 

suspecting that there is such a thing as a tree on the pre- 
mises. 

The Percys had this house in consequence of a marriage 
with the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was Northamp- 
ton's nephew. During the Earl's possession it was called 
Suffolk House, and furnished an escape to a person of the 
name of Emerson from one of the mad pranks of Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury, who was for righting everybody. His 
lordship had had sundry fits of ague, which brought him at 
last to be " so lean and yellow, that scarce any man," he says, 
" did know him." 

" It happened," he continues, " during this sickness, that I walked 
abroad one day towards Whitehall, where, meeting with one Emerson, 
who spoke very disgraceful words of Sir Robert Harley, being then 
my dear friend, my weakness could not hinder me to be sensible of 
my friend's dishonour; shaking him, therefore, by a long beard he 
wore, I stept a little aside, and drew my sword in tlte street; Captain 
Thomas Scrivan, a friend of mine, not being far off on one side, and 
divers friends of his on the other side. All that saw me wondered 
how I could go, being so weak and consumed as I was, but much 
more that I would offer to fight; howsoever, Emerson, instead of 
drawing his sword, ran away into Suffolk House, and afterwards in- 
formed the Lords of the Council of what I had done; who, not long 
after sending for me, did not so much reprehend my taking part with 
my friend, as that I would adventure to fight, being in such a bad 
condition of health."* 

The disgraceful words spoken by Emerson were very likely 
nothing at all, except to his lordship's ultra-chivalrous fancy ; 
but this is a curious scene to imagine at the entrance of the 
present quiet Northumberland House — Emerson slipping into 
the gate with horror in his looks, and the lean and yellow 
ghost of the knight- errant behind him, sword in hand. 

Mr. Malcolm has spoken of the apartments of Dr. Percy. 
This was Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, who gave an im- 
pulse to the spirit of the modern muse by his Eeliques of 
Ancient English Poetry. He was a kinsman of the Northum- 
berland family. We believe it was in Northumberland House 
that his friend Goldsmith, stammering out a fine speech of 
thanks to a personage in a splendid dress whom he took for 
the Duke, was informed, when he had done, that it was his 
Grace's "gentleman." 

A little way up Catherine Street is Exeter Street, where 
Johnson first lodged when he came to town. His lodgings 

* "Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury," in the "Autobio- 
graphy," p. 11Q. 



CATHERINE STREET. 189 

were at the house of Mr. Morris, a stay-maker. He dined at 
the Pine-apple in New Street, " for eightpence, with very- 
good company." Several of them, he told Boswell, had 
travelled. " They expected to meet every day ; but did not 
know one another's names." The rest of his information is a 
curious and interesting specimen of his disposition. " It 
used," said he, " to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank 
wine : but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a 
penny, and gave the waiter a penny ; so that I was quite as 
well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter 
nothing." Johnson drank at this time no fermented liquors. 
Boswell supposes that he had gained a knowledge of the art of 
living in London from an Irish painter, whom he knew at 
Birmingham, and of whom he gave this account. 

" Thirty pounds a year," according to this economical philosopher, 
" was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. 
He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might 
live in a garret at eighteen pence a week; few people would inquire 
where he lodged : and if they did, it was easy to say, ( Sir, I am to be 
found at such a place.' By spending three pence at a coffee-house, 
he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he 
might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, 
and do without supper. On clean shirt day he went abroad and paid 
visits."* 

The Strand end of Catherine Street is mentioned in Gay's 
" Trivia " for a notoriety which it now unfortunately shares 
with too many places to render it remarkable. His picture 
of one of the women he speaks of possesses a literal truth, 
the characteristic of the whole of this curious poem. 
"'Tis she who nightly strolls with sauntering pace; 
No stubborn stays her yielding shape embrace; 
Beneath the lamp her tawdry ribands glare, 
The new scower'd manteau, and the slattern air; 
High draggled petticoats her travels show, 
And hollow cheeks with artful blushes glow. 
In riding-hood, near tavern door she phes, 
Or muffled pinners hide her livid eyes. 
With empty band-box she delights to range, 
And feigns a distant errand from the 'Change." 

Gay contents himself with a picture, and a warning. In 
our times, we have learnt to pity the human beings, and to 
think what can be done to remedy the first causes of the evil. 

The houses between Catherine Street and Burleigh Street 
stand upon ground formerly occupied by Wimbledon House, 
a mansion built by Sir Edward Cecil, whom Charles I. created 
* Boswell, vol. i., p. 81. 



190 BEEF-STEAK CLUB. 

Viscount Wimbledon. It was burnt down ; and Stow says, 
that the day before, his lordship's country house at Wimbledon 
was blown up. 

The late Lyceum was built about the year 1/65, as an 
academy and exhibition-room, in anticipation of the royal one 
then contemplated. It did not succeed ; and part of it was 
converted into a theatre for musical performances. It then 
became a place of exhibition for large panoramic pictures, 
among which we remember with pleasure the battle pieces of 
Eobert Ker Porter (Seringapatam, Acre, &c.) A species of 
entertainment then took place in it, which has justly been 
called " useful and liberal," presenting, on a regular stage, 
pictures or scenes of famous places, while a person read 
accounts of them from a desk. We remember the iEgyptiana, 
or description of iEgypt, and, if we mistake not, an attempt, 
not quite so well founded, to illustrate the scenes of Milton's 
Allegro and Penseroso. Neither of the attempts met with 
success ; but the former, perhaps, might be tried again with 
advantage, now that information and the thirst for it have so 
wonderfully increased. The panorama, however, may have 
realised all that can be done in this way. Visitors to those 
admirable contrivances may be almost said to become 
travellers ; and a reader at hand might disturb them, like 
an impertinence. We recollect being so early one morning 
at a panorama, that we had the place to ouselves. The room 
was without a sound, and the scene Florence ; and when we 
came out, the noise and crowd of the streets had an effect on 
us, as if we had been suddenly transported out of an Italian 
solitude. The Lyceum has since been handsomely rebuilt 
as a new English Opera House, under the management of 
Mr. Arnold, who has done much to cultivate a love of music 
in this country. Over the former theatre, we believe, was a 
room built by him for the members of the famous Beef-Steak 
Club, equally celebrated for loving their steaks and. roasting 
one another.* 

* The author of a " History of the Clubs of London" (vol. ii. p. 3.), 
says that this is not the Beef-Steak Club of which Estcourt, the 
comedian, was steward, and Mrs. Woffington president. He derives 
its origin from an accidental dinner taken by Lord Peterborough 
in the scenic room of Rich, the Harlequin, over Covent Garden 
Theatre. The original gridiron, on which Rich broiled the Peer's 
beef-steak, is still preserved, as the palladium of the club; and the 
members have it engraved on their buttons. It has generally, we 
believe, admitted the leading men of the day, of whatever description, 



EXETER CHANGE. 19.1 

The little crowded nest of shop-counters and wild beasts, 
called Exeter Change, which has lately been pulled down, 
took its name from a mansion belonging to the Bishop of 
Exeter, whether on the south or north side of the street does 
not appear. It is not necessary that the spot should have 
been the same. Any connection with a large mansion, or its 
neighbourhood, is sufficient to give name to a new house. 
Pennant thinks, we know not on what authority, that the 
great Lord Burleigh had a mansion on the spot ; and he adds, 
that he died here. Exeter Change was supposed to have 
been built in the reign of William and Mary, as a speculation. 
The lower story, at the beginning of the last century, was 
appropriated to the shops of milliners ; and upholsterers had 
the upper. In the year 1721, the town were invited to this 
place to look at a bed. 

" Mr. Normond Cony," saith the historian, " exhibited a singular 
bed for two shillings and sixpence each person, the product of his own 
ingenuity ; the curtains of which were woven in the most ingenious 
manner, with feathers of the greatest variety and beauty he could 
procure ; the ground represented white damask, mixed with silver 
and ornaments of various descriptions, supporting vases of flowers 
and fruits. Each curtain had a purple border a foot in breadth, 
branched with flowers shaded with scarlet, the valence and bases the 
same. The bed was eighteen feet in height ; and from the description 
must have been a superior effort of genius, equally original with the 
works of the South Sea Islanders, whose cloaks, mantles, and caps, 
grace the collection formed by Captain Cook, now preserved in the 
British Museum."* 

This was a gentle exhibition enough. Sixty years ago, 
instead of the bed, was presented the right honourable body 
of Lord Baltimore, a personage who ran away with young 
ladies against their will. The body lay " in state," previously 
to its interment at Epsom. Lord Baltimore was succeeded by 
the wild beasts, who kept possession in their narrow unhealthy 
cages till the death of the poor elephant in 1826, which con- 
spiring with the new spirit of improvement to call final atten- 
tion to this excresence in the Strand, it was adjudged to be 
rooted out. The death of this unfortunate animal, who seems 
to have had just reason enough to grow mad, had its proper 
effect, in exciting the public to guard against similar evils ; 
nor is it likely that these intelligent and noble creatures, nor 

provided they can joke and bear joking. The author just mentioned 
says, that Lord Sandwich's and Wilkes's days are generally quoted 
as the golden period of the society. 
* Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 302. 



192 



Lincoln's inn and its neighbourhood. 




indeed any others, will 
•undergo such a mon- 
strous state of exist- 
ence again. 

Passing one day by 
Exeter Change, we be- 
held a sight strange 
enough to witness in a 
great thoroughfare — 
a fine horse startled, 
and pawing the ground, 
at the roar of lions and 
tigers. It was at the 
time, we suppose, when 
the beasts were being 
fed. 




CHAPTER V. 

LINCOLN'S INN, AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. 

Lincoln's Inn — Ben Jonson's Bricklaying — Enactments against 
Beards — Oliver Cromwell, More, Hale, and other eminent Students 
of Lincoln's Inn — Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Square — Houses there 
built by Inigo Jones — Pepys's Admiration of the Comforts of Mr. 
Povey — Surgeons' College — Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe, and 
Lord Sandwich— Execution of the patriotic Lord Russell, with an 
Account of the Cimrmstances that led to and accompanied it, and 
some Remarks on his Character — Affecting Passages from the Let- 
ters of his Widow — Ludicrous Story connected with Newcastle House. 

INCOLN'S INN, upon the side of Chan- 
cery Lane, presents a long, old front of 
brick, more simple than clean. It is 
saturated with the London smoke. With- 
in is a handsome row of buildings, and 
a garden, in which Bickerstaff describes 
himself as walking, by favour of the 
Benchers, who had grown old with him.* 
It will be recollected that Bickerstaff lived in Shire Lane, 
which leads into this inn from Temple-bar. The garden- 
* Tatler, No. 100. 




BEN jonson's bricklaying. 193 

wall on the side next Chancery Lane is said by Aubrey to 
have been the scene of Ben Jonson's performance as a brick- 
layer. We have spoken of it in our remarks on that lane ; 
but shall now add the particulars. " His mother, after his 
father's death," says Aubrey, " married a bricklayer ; and 'tis 
generally said that he wrought for some time with his father- 
in-law, and particularly on the garden-wall of Lincoln's Inn v 
next to Chancery Lane." Aubrey's report adds, that " a 
knight, or bencher, walking through and hearing him repeat 
some Greek names out of Homer, discoursing with him, and 
finding him to have a wit extraordinary, gave him some 
exhibition to maintain him at Trinity College in Cambridge."* 
Fuller says, that he had been there before at St. John's, and 
that he was obliged by the family poverty to return to the 
bricklaying. j" " And let them not blush," says this good- 
hearted writer, " that have, but those who have not a lawful 
calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of 
Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowell in his hand, he had a 
book in his pocket." A late editor of Ben Jonson rejects these 
literary accounts of the poet's bricklaying as " figments." J 
And he brings his author's own representations to prove that 
he left the business, not for the University, but the continent. 
As this writer has nothing, however, to oppose to what Aubrey 
and Fuller believed respecting the rest, the reports, so far, are 
worth as much as they were before. Nobody was more likely 
than Ben Jonson to carry a Greek or Latin book with him on 
such occasions : nor, as far as that matter goes, to let others 
become aware of it. 

Pennant's sketch of Lincoln's Inn continues to be the best, 
notwithstanding all that has been said of it since his time. 
He begins with observing, that " the gate is of brick, but of 
no small ornament to the street." This is the gate in Chancery 
Lane. 

"It was built," he continues, "by Sir Thomas Lovel, once a 
member of this inn, and afterwards treasurer of the household to 
Henry VII. The other parts were rebuilt at different times, but 
much about the same period. None of the original building is left, 
for it was formed out of the house of the Black Friars, which fronted 
Holborn end of the palace of Kalph Nevil, Chancellor of England, and 
Bishop of Chichester, built by him in the reign of Henry HI., on a 
piece of ground granted to him by the king. It continued to be in- 

* "Lifes and Letters," ut supra. 

f " Worthies of England," ut supra. 

J Gifford's " Works of Ben Jonson," vol. i., p. ix. 

© 



194 ENACTMENTS AGAINST BEARDS. 

habited by some of the successors in the see. This was the original 
site of the Dominicians or Black Friars, before they removed to the 
spot now known by that name. On part of the ground, now covered 
with buildings, Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, built an Inne, as it was 
in those days -called, for himself, in which he died in 1312. The 
ground did belong to the Black Friars; and was granted by Edward I. 
to that great Earl. The whole has retained his name. One of the 
Bishops of Chichester, in after times, did grant leases of the buildings 
to certain students of the law, reserving to themselves a rent, and 
lodgings for themselves whenever they came to town. This seems to 
have taken place about the time of Henry VII." 

" The chapel,'' continues our author, " was designed by Inigo 
Jones ; it is built upon massy pillars, and affords, under its shelter, 
an excellent walk. This work evinces that Inigo never was designed 
for a Gothic architect. The Lord Chancellor holds his sittings in the 
great halL This, like that of the Temple, had its revels, and great 
Christmasses. Instead of the Lord of Misrule, it had its King of the 
Cocknies. They had also a Jack Straw ; but in the time of Queen 
Elizabeth he, and all his adherents, were utterly banished. I must 
not omit, that in the same reign sumptuary laws were made to regu- 
late the dress of the members of the house; who were forbidden to 
wear long hair, or great ruffs, cloaks, boots, or spurs. In the reign of 
Henry VIII. beards were prohibited at the great table, under pain of 
paying double commons. His daughter, Elizabeth, in the first year 
of her reign, confined them to a fortnight's growth, under penalty of 
3s. Ad. : but the fashion prevailed so strongly, that the prohibition 
was repealed, and no manner of size limited to that venerable ex- 
crescence."* 

"Tis merry in the hall, 
When beards wag all, 

says the proverb ; but the lawyers in those days had already 
so many refreshments to their solemnity, in masks and revels, 
that it was thought necessary to provide for decency of masti- 
cation in ordinary. Attempts to regulate trifles of this sort, 
however, have always been found more difficult than any 
others, the impertinence of the interference being in propor- 
tion. Think of the officers watching the illegal growth of the 
beard ; the vexation of the " dandies," who wanted their 
beards out of doors ; and the resentment of the unservile part 
of the elders ! He that parted with his beard, rather than his 
three and fourpence, would be looked upon as an alien. 

In the hall of Lincoln's Inn is Hogarth's celebrated failure 
of " Paul preaching before Felix." It seems hard upon a 
great man to exhibit a specimen of what he could not do. 
However, the subject does not appear to have. been of the 
society's choosing. A bequest had been made them which 
produced a commission to Hogarth, probably in expectation 

* Pennant, ut supra, p. 176, 



EMINENT STUDENTS OF LINCOLN'S INN. 195 

that he would illustrate some of the consequences of good laws 
in his usual manner. 

Old Fortescue was of Lincoln's Inn ; Spelman, the great 
antiquary ; Sir Thomas More ; Cromwell ; Sir MathewHale; 
Lord Chancellor Egerton, otherwise known by his title of Lord . 
Ellesmere ; Shaftesbury, the statesman ; and Lord Mansfield. 
Dr. Donne also studied there for a short time, but left the Inn 
tp enjoy an inheritance, and became a clergyman. However, 
he returned to it in after life as preacher of the lecture ; which 
office he held about two years, to the great satisfaction of his 
hearers. Tillotson was another preacher. It is difficult to 
present to one's imagination the venerable judges in their 
younger days ; to think of Hale as a gay fellow (which he 
was till an accident made him otherwise) ; or fancy that Sir 
Thomas More had any other face but the profound and pon- 
derous one in his pictures. His face, indeed, must have been 
fall of meaning enough at all times ; for at twenty-one he was 
a stirring youth in Parliament ; and at twenty he took to 
wearing a hair-shirt, as an aid to his meditations. It is inte- 
resting to fancy him passing us in the Inn square, with a glance 
of his deep eye ; we (of posterity) being in the secret of his 
hair-shirt, which the less informed passengers are not. 

The account of Hale's change of character, on his entrance 
into Lincoln's Inn, merits to be repeated. 

" At Oxford," says his biographer, " he fell into many levities and 
extravagances, and was preparing to go along with his tutor, who 
went chaplain to Lord Vere, into the Low Countries, with a resolution 
of entering himself into the Prince of Orange's army, when he was 
diverted from his design by being engaged in a lawsuit with Sir 
William Whitmore, who laid claim to part of his estate. Afterwards, 
by the persuasions of Serjeant Glanville, who happened to be his 
counsel in this case, and had an opportunity of observing his capacity, 
he resolved upon the study of the law, and was admitted of Lincoln's 
Inn, November 8, 1629. Sensible of the time he had lost in frivolous 
pursuits, he now studied at the rate of sixteen hours a-day, and threw 
aside all appearance of vanity in his apparel. He is said, indeed, to 
have neglected his dress so much, that, being a strong and well-built 
man, he was once taken by a press-gang, as a person very fit for sea- 
service, which pleasant mistake made him regard more decency in his 
clothes for the future, though never to any degree of extravagant 
finery. What confirmed him still more in a serious and regular way 
of life was an accident, which is related to have befallen one of his 
companions. Hale, with other young students of the Inn, being 
invited out of town, one of the company called for so much wine, that 
notwithstanding all Hale could do to prevent it, he went on in his 
excess till he fell down in a fit, seemingly dead, and was with some 
difficulty recovered. This particularly affected Hale, in whom the 

2 



196 OLIVEJR CROMWELL — MANSFIELD. 

principles of religion had been early implanted ; and, therefore, 
ing into another room, and falling down upon his knees, he prayed 
earnestly to God, both for his friend, that he might be restored to life 
again, and for himself, that he might be forgiven for being present 
and countenancing so much excess ; and he vowed to God, that he 
would never again keep company in that manner, nor drink a health 
while he lived. His friend recovered ; and from this time Mr. Hale 
forsook all his gay acquaintance, and divided his whole time between 
the duties of religion, and the studies of his profession." 

Cromwell is supposed to have been about two years in 
Lincoln's Inn, and while he was there attended to anything 
but the law, the future devout Protector being, in fact, nothing 
more or less than a gambler and debauchee. However, lie is 
supposed to have run all his round of dissipation in that time. 
Mansfield's residence in Lincoln's Inn, when Mr. Murray, 
gave rise to a singular reference in Pope. It is in the trans- 
lation of Horace's ode, " Intermissa Venus diu," where the 
poet says to the goddess — 

'* I am not now, alas ! the man 
As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne. 
To number jive direct your doves, 
There spread round Murray all your blooming loves ; 
Noble and young, who strikes the heart 
With every sprightly, every decent part ; 
Equal the injured to defend, 
To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend.'* 

This number five to which Venus is to go with her doves, 
points out Murray's apartments in Lincoln's Inn. Pope, as 
we have mentioned elsewhere, thought that nature intended 
his noble acquaintance for an Ovid ; a notion partly suggested, 
perhaps, by Ovid's having been a lawyer. It was during his 
residence in Lincoln's Inn, that the future Lord Chief Justice 
is said to have drunk the Pretender's health on his knees; 
which he very likely did. The charge was brought up 
twenty years afterwards, to ruin his prospects under the 
Hanover succession ; but it came to nothing. One dynasty 
has no dislike to a strong prejudice in favour of a preceding 
dynasty, when the latter has ceased to be formidable. The 
propensity to adhere to royalty is looked upon as a good 
symptom ; and the event generally answers the expectation. 
The favourite courtiers under the house of Brunswick have 
come of Jacobite families. 

A century ago, according to a passage in Gay, Lincoln's 
Inn and the neighbourhood were dangerous places to walk 
through at night. 



Lincoln's inn fields. 197 

" Where Lincoln's Inn, wide space, is railed around, 
Cross not with venturous step ; there oft is found 
The lurking thief, who while the daylight shone, 
Made the wall echo with his begging tone : 
That crutch, which late compassion moved, shall wound 
Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground. 
Though thou art tempted by the linkman's call, 
Yet trust him not along the lonely wall ; 
In the midway he'll quench the flaming brand, 
And share the booty with the pilfering band. 
Still keep the public streets, where oily rays, 
Shot from the crystal lamp, o'erspread the ways." 

The wall here mentioned is probably that which was not 
long since displaced by the new one, and the elegant structure 
that now adorns the east side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

Lincoln's Inn Fields, now a handsome square, set more 
agreeably than most others, with grass plat and underwood, 
were first disposed into their present regular appearance by 
Inigo Jones, under the auspices of a committee of gentry and 
nobility, one of whom was Bacon. Inigo built some of the 
houses, and gave to the ground-plot of the square the exact 
dimensions of the base of one of the pyramids of Egypt. He 
could not have hit upon a better mode of conveying to the 
imagination a sense of those enormous structures. If the 
passenger stops and pictures to himself one of the huge 
slanting sides of the pyramid, as wide as the whole length of 
the square, leaning away up into the atmosphere, with an 
apex we know not how high, it will indeed seem to him a 
kind of stone mountain. 

The houses in Lincoln's Inn Fields built by Inigo Jones 
are in Arch Row (the western side), and may still be distin- 
guished. Pennant speaks of one of them as being " Lindesey 
House, once the seat of the Earls of Lindesey, and of their 
descendants, the Dukes of Ancaster." They are probably still 
a great deal more handsome inside, and more convenient, 
than any of the flimsy modern houses preferred to them ; but 
London has grown so large, that everybody who can afford it 
lives at the fashionable outskirts for the fresh air. It is pro- 
bable that Inigo's houses created an ambition of good building 
in this quarter. Pepys speaks of a Mr. Povey's house in Lin- 
coln's Inn Fields as a miracle of elegance and comfort. His 
description of it is characteristic of the snug and wondering 
Pepys. 

" Thence (that is to say, from chapel and the ladies) with Mr. 
Povey home to dinner ; where extraordinary cheer. And after dinner 



198 HOUSES BUILT BY INIGO JONES. 

up and down to see his house. And in a word, methinks, for his per- 
spective in the little closet ; his room floored above with woods of 
several colours, like, but above the best cabinet-work I ever saw ; his 
grotto and vault, with his bottles of wine, and a well therein to keep 
them cool ; his furniture of all sorts ; his bath at the top of the house, 
good pictures, and his manners of eating and drinking ; do surpass all 
that ever I did see of one man in all my life." * 

The Country and City Mouse, in Pope's imitation of Horace, 

g° 

To a tall house near Lincoln's Inn, 

which had 

Palladian walls, Venetian doors, 
Grotesco roofs, and stucco floors. 

The house of a late architect (Sir John Soane) is observable 
in Holborn Eow (the north side of the square), and has a 
singular but pleasing effect, though not quite desirable perhaps 
in this northern climate, where light and sun are in request. 
It presents a case of stone, added to the original front, and 
comprising a balcony and arcade. Shrubs and plate-glass 
complete the taste of its appearance. On the opposite side of 
the way (called Portugal Eow, most likely from our connec- 
tion with Portugal in Charles the Second's time), the inha- 
bitant of the above house had the pleasure, we believe, of 
contemplating his own work in the handsome front and 
portico of Surgeon's College. This mode of giving a new 
front to a house, and fetching it out into a portico, is an 
ingenious way of getting up an ornament to the metropolis at 
little expense. Surgeons' College, instead of being two or 
three old houses with a new face, looks like a separate build- 
ing. In Portugal Eow sometime lived Sir Eichard Fanshawe, 
in whose quaint translation of the Camoens there is occa- 
sionally more genuine poetry, than in the less unequal version 
of Mickle. This accomplished person was recalled from an 
embassy in Spain, on the ground that he had signed a treaty 
without authority ; which was fact ; but the suspicious neces- 
sity of finding some honourable way of removing Lord Sand- 
wich from his command in the navy, induced Lady Fanshawe 
and others to conclude that he was sacrificed to that con- 
venience. He died on the intended day of his return, of a 
violent fever, aggravated, not improbably, perhaps caused, by 
this awkward close of his mission : for such things have been, 
with men of sensitive imaginations. His wife, a very frank 
and cordial woman, has left interesting memoirs of him, in 



man, una leu inicrcaung mej 
* Diary, ut supra, vol. ii., p. 185. 



SIR RICHARD AND LADY FANSHAWE. 199 

which she countenances a clamour of that day, that Lord 
Sandwich was a coward. She adds, " He neither understood 
the custom of the (Spanish) court, nor the language, nor 
indeed anything but a vicious life ; and thus (addressing her 
children) was he shuffled into your father's employment, to 
reap the benefit of his five years' negotiation."* We quote 
this passage here, because Lord Sandwich was himself an 
inhabitant of Lincoln's Inn Fields. His want of courage (a 
charge shamefully bandied to and fro between officers at 
that time) is surely not to be taken for granted upon the word 
of his enemies, considering the testimonies borne in his favour 
by the Duke of York and others, and his numerous successes 
against the enemy. It is possible, however, that the pleasures 
of Charles's court might have done him no good. Sandwich 
had been one of Cromwell's council. He appears afterwards 
to have been a gallant of Lady Castlemain's ; was a great 
courtier ; and probably had as little principle as most public 
men of that age. Pepys, who was his relation, describes him 
as being a lute-player. 

On Lady Fanshawe's return to England, she took a house 
for twenty-one years in Holborn Eow (the north side of the 
Fields), where the contemplation of the houses opposite must 
have been very sad. Her account of the circumstances under 
which she returned is of a melancholy interest. 1 

"I had not," she says, "God is my witness, above twenty-five 
doubloons by me at my husband's death, to bring home a family of 
three score servants, but was forced to sell one thousand pounds' 
worth of our own plate, and to spend the Queen's present of two 
thousand doubloons in my journey to England, not owing nor leaving 
one shilling debt in Spain, I thank God ; nor did my husband leave 
any debt at home, which every ambassador cannot say. Neither did 
these circumstances following prevail to mend my condition, much 
less found I that compassion I expected upon the view of myself, that 
had lost at once my husband, and fortune in him, with my son, but 
twelve months old, in my arms, four daughters, the eldest but thirteen 
years of age, with the body of my dear husband daily in my sight for 
near six months together, and a distressed family, all to be by me in 
honour and honesty provided for ; and, to add to my afflictions, neither 
persons sent to conduct me, nor pass, nor ship, nor money to carry 
me one thousand miles, but some few letters of compliment from the 
chief ministers, bidding ' God help me ! ' as they do to beggars, and 
they might have added, \ they had nothing for me,' with great truth. 
But God did hear, and see, and help me, and brought my soul out of 
trouble ; and, by his blessed providence, I and you live, move, and 

* "Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, &c, written by herself." 1729, 
p. 267. 



200 CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO 

have our being, and I humbly pray God that that blessed providence 
may ever relieve our wants, Amen."* 

Lady Fanshawe was no coward, whatever her foes may 
have been. During a former voyage with her husband to 
Spain, when she had been married about six years, the vessel 
was attacked by a Turkish galley, on which occasion she has 
left the following touching account of her behaviour : — 

" When we had just passed the straits, we saw coming towards us, 
with full sails, a Turkish galley well manned, and we believed we 
should be all carried away slaves, for this man had so laden his ship 
with goods from Spain, that his guns were useless, though the ship 
carried sixty guns ; he called for brandy, and after he had well 
drunken, and all his men, which were near two hundred, he called for 
arms, and cleared the deck as well as he could, resolving to fight 
rather than lose his ship, which was worth thirty thousand pounds ; 
this was sad for us passengers, but my husband bid us be sure to keep 
in the cabin, and not appear — the women — which would make the 
Turks think we were a man-of-war, but if they saw women they 
would take us for merchants and board us. He went upon the deck, 
and took a gun and bandoliers, and sword, and, with the rest of the 
ship's company, stood upon deck, expecting the arrival of the Turkish 
man-of-war. This beast, the captain, had locked me up in the cabin ; 
I knocked and called long to no purpose, until at length the cabin-boy 
came and opened the door ; I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as 
to give me his blue thrum cap he wore, and his tarred coat, which he 
did, and I gave him half-a-crown, and putting them on, and flinging 
away my night-clothes, I crept up softly, and stood upon the deck by 
my husband's side, as free from sickness and fear, as, I confess, from 
discretion ; but it was the effect of that passion which I could never 
master. 

" By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so well 
satisfied with speech and sight of each other's forces, that the Turks' 
man-of-war tacked about, and we continued our course. But when 
your father saw it convenient to retreat, looking upon me, he blessed 
himself, and snatched me up in his arms, saying, ' Good God, that 
love can make this change!' and though he seemingly chid me, he 
would laugh at it as often as he remembered that voyage." 

We now come to an event, uniting the most touching cir- 
cumstances of private life with the loftiest utility of public, 
and the benefits of which we are this day enjoying, perhaps 
in every one of our comforts. In this square, now possessed 
by inhabitants who can think and write as they please on all 
subjects, and the centre of which is adorned with roses and 
lilacs, was executed the celebrated patriot, Lord Eussell. We 
should ill perform any part of the object of this work, if we 
did not dwell at some length upon a scene so interesting, and 
upon the circumstances that led to it. 

* "Memoires of Lady Fanshawe, &c, written by herself." 1729, 
p. 298. 



THE EXECUTION OF LORD RUSSELL. 201 

Lord Russell (sometimes improperly called Lord William 
Russell, for he had succeeded to the courtesy-title by the 
decease of his elder brothers,) was son of William, Earl of 
Bedford, by Lady Ann Carr, daughter of Carr, Earl of 
Somerset; and he was beheaded in the year 1683, the last 
year but two of the reign of King Charles II. , for an alleged 
conspiracy to seize the King's guards and put him to death. 
The conspiracy was called the Eye House Plot, but incorrectly 
as far as Lord Russell was concerned ; for it is not proved 
that he ever heard of the house which occasioned the name ; 
and he was condemned upon allegations which would have 
destroyed him, had no such place existed. The Rye House 
was a farm near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, belonging to 
one of the alleged conspirators, and it had a bye-road near it 
through which Charles was accustomed to pass in returning 
from the races at Newmarket. It was said that the King was 
to have been assassinated in this road, but that a fire at New- 
market, which put the town into confusion, hastened his return 
to London before the conspirators had time to assemble. 

Charles II., and his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards 
James II. , in the prosecution of those designs against the 
liberty and religion of the state, which are now acknowledged 
by all historians, had lately succeeded in producing a strong 
re-action against the party opposed to them. This party, the 
Whigs, in their dread of abitrary power and popery, had 
attempted with great pertinacity to exclude the Duke of York, 
an avowed papist, from the succession. They had indicted 
him as a popish recusant : they had listened, with too great 
credulity, to the story of a Popish Plot, for which several 
persons were executed : and while these strong measures were 
going forward, to which the general dread of popery en- 
couraged them, they were inquiring into the King's illegal 
connections with France, and putting the last sting to his 
vexation by refusing him money. Charles's gambling and 
debaucheries kept him in a perpetual state of poverty. He 
was always endeavouring to raise money upon every shift he 
could devise, and misappropriating all he obtained, which 
completed the ingloriousness of his reign by rendering him a 
pensioner of France. He had a strong party of corruptionists 
in the House of Commons ; but the public feeling against the 
Duke gave the elections a balance the other way ; and the 
poor King was compelled, from time to time, to purchase what 
money he wanted, by the surrender of a popular right. 



202 CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO 

Driven thus from loss to loss, and not knowing where the 
diminution of his resources would end, Charles at length 
expressed himself willing to limit the powers of a Popish 
successor, though he would not consent to exclude him. The 
Whigs, strong in their vantage-ground, and backed by the 
voice of the country, rejected what they would formerly have 
agreed to, and insisted on the exclusion. And here the re- 
action commenced in Charles's favour. The Whigs had allied 
themselves to the dissenters, whose toleration they advocated 
in proportion as they opposed that of the Catholics. It was a 
contradiction natural enough at that time, when the remem- 
brance of Protestant martyrdom was still lively, and the 
growth of philosophy had not neutralised the papal spirit, or, 
at least, was not yet understood to have done so ; but by 
means of this alliance between the Whigs and Presbyterians 
Charles succeeded in awakening the fears of the orthodox. 
A secret treaty with the French King enabled him to reckon 
for a time on being able to dispense with the contributions of 
Parliament; and when the latter again pressed the exclusion 
bill, he dissolved them, with high complaints of their inve- 
teracy against government, and artful insinuations of the 
favour they showed the dissenters. This declaration was 
read in all the churches and chapels, and produced the re- 
action he looked for. The Whig leaders, withdrawing into 
retirement, seemed to give up the contest for the present ; 
but this was no signal to power to abstain from pursuing 
them. Charles, to secure himself a Parliament that should 
give him money without inquiry, and to indulge his brother 
in his love of revenge (not omitting a portion on his own 
account), set himself heartily about influencing the elections 
for a new House of Commons. The dissenters were perse- 
cuted all over the country ; the Whig newspapers put down ; 
one man, for his noisy zeal against Popery, put to death by 
means of the most infamous witnesses, who had sworn on the 
other side ; and Shaftesbury's life was aimed at, but saved by 
the contrivances of the city authorities. The liberties of the 
city were then assailed, with but too great success, by means 
of judges placed on the bench for that purpose. Other cor- 
rupt law officers were brought into action ; a servile lord- 
mayor was induced to force two sheriffs upon the city, in 
open defiance of law and a majority ; in short, every obstacle 
was removed which accompanied the existence of properly 
constituted authorities, and of that late anti-popery spirit of 



THE EXECUTION OF LOED RUSSELL. 203 

the nation, which was now comparatively silent, for fear of 
being confounded with disaffection to the church. 

For an account of what took place upon this corruption of 
church and bench, and neutralisation of the popular spirit, we 
shall now have recourse to the pages of the latest writer on the 
subject ; who, though a descendant of Lord Eussell, has stated 
it with a truth and moderation worthy of the best spirit of his 
ancestor. The narrative of the execution we shall take from 
an eye-witness, and intersperse such remarks as a diligent 
inquiry into the conduct and character of Lord Russell has 
suggested to our own love of truth. 

" The election of the sheriffs," says our author, " seemed to com- 
plete the victory of the throne over the people. It was evident, from 
the past conduct of the court, that they would now select whom they 
pleased for condemnation. 

" Lord Russell received the news with the regret which, in a person 
of his temper, it was most likely to produce. Lord Shafteshury, on 
other hand, who was provoked at the apathy of his party, received 
with joy the news of the appointment of the sheriffs, thinking that 
his London friends, seeing their necks in danger, would join with him 
in raising an insurrection. He hoped at first to make use of the 
names of the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Russell, to catch the idle 
and unwary hy the respect paid to their characters ; but when he 
found them too cautious to compromise themselves, he endeavoured 
to ruin their credit with the citizens. He said that the Duke of 
Monmouth was a tool of the court ; that Lord Essex had also made 
his bargain, and was to go to Ireland ; and that, between them, Lord 
Russell was deceived. It is a strong testimony to the real worth of 
Lord Eussell, that, when he made himself obnoxious, either to the 
court or to the more violent of his own party, the only charge they 
ever brought against him was, that of being deceived, either by a vain 
air of popularity or too great a confidence in his friends, 

"Lord Shaftesbury, finding himself deserted, then attempted to 
raise an insurrection, by means of his own partisans in the city. The 
Duke of Monmouth, at various times, discouraged these attempts. 
On one of these occasions, he prevailed on Lord Russell, who had come 
to town on private affairs, to go with him to a meeting, at the house 
of Sheppard, a wine-merchant. 

" Lord Shaftesbury, being concealed in the city at this time, did 
not dare to appear himself at this meeting, but sent two of his crea- 
tures, Rumsey and Ferguson. Lord Grey and Sir Thomas Armstrong 
were also there; but nothing was determined at this meeting. 

" Soon after this, Lord Shaftesbury, finding he could not bring his 
friends to rise with the speed he wished, and being in fear of being 
discovered if he remained in London any longer, went over to Holland, 
He died in January, 1683. 

* * * * 

"After Shaftesbury was gone, there were held meetings of his 
former creatures in the chambers of one West, an active, talking man, 
who had got the name of being an atheist. Colonel Rumsey, who had 



201 CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO 

served under Cromwell, and afterwards in Portugal j Ferguson, who 
had a general propensity for plots; Goodenough, who had been under- 
sheriff; and one Holloway, of Bristol, were the chief persons at these 
meetings. Lord Howard was, at one time, among them. Their dis- 
course seems to have extended itself to the worst species of treason 
and murder; but whether they had any concerted plan for assas- 
sinating the King is still a mystery. Amongst those who were 
sounded in this business was one Keeling, a vintner, sinking in busi- 
ness, to whom Goodenough often spoke of their designs. This man 
went to Legge, then made Lord Dartmouth, and discovered all he 
knew. Lord Dartmouth took him to Secretary Jenkins, who told him 
he could not proceed without more witnesses. It would also seem 
that some promises were made to him, for he said in a tavern, in the 
hearing of many persons, that 'he had considerable proffers made 
him of money, and a place worth 100/. or 80Z. per annum, to do some- 
thing for them ;' and he afterwards obtained a place in the Victualling 
office, by means of Lord Halifax. The method he took of procuring 
another witness was, by taking his brother into the company of 
Goodenough, and afterwards persuading him to go and tell what he 
had heard at Whitehall. 

"The substance of the information given by Josiah Keeling, in his 
first examination, was, that a plot had been formed for enlisting forty 
men, to intercept the King and Duke on their return from New- 
market, at a farm-house called Eye, belonging to one Rumbold, a 
maltster; that this plan being defeated by a fire at Newmarket, which 
caused the King's return sooner than was expected, the design of an 
insurrection was laid; and, as the means of carrying this project into 
effect, they said that Goodenough had spoken of 4,000 men and 
20,000/. to be raised by the Duke of Monmouth and other great men. 
The following day, the two brothers made oath, that Goodenough bad 
told them, that Lord Kussell had promised to engage in the design, 
and to use all his interest to accomplish the killing of the King and 
the Duke. When the Council found that the Duke of Monmouth and 
Lord Russell were named, they wrote to the King to come to London, 
for they would not venture to go farther without his presence and 
leave. In the meantime, warrants were issued for the apprehension 
of several of the conspirators. Hearing of this, and having had 
private information from the brother of Keeling, they had a meeting, 
on the 18th of June, at Captain Walcot's lodging. At this meeting 
were present Walcot, Wade, Rumsey, Norton, the two Goodenoughs, 
Nelthrop, West, and Ferguson. Finding they had no means either of 
opposing the King or flying into Holland, they agreed to separate, 
and shift each man for himself. 

" A proclamation was now issued for seizing on some who could 
not be found ; and amongst these, Rumsey and West were named. 
The next day West delivered himself, and Rumsey came in a day 
after him. Their confessions, especially concerning the assassinations 
at the Rye-house, were very ample. Burnet says, they had concerted 
a story to be brought out on such an emergency. 

" In this critical situation, Lord Russell, though perfectly sensible 
of his danger, acted with the greatest composure. He had long before 
told Mr. Johnson, that 'he was very sensible he should fall a sacrifice; 
arbitrary government could not be set up in England without wading 
through his blood.' The day before the King arrived, a messenger of 



THE EXECUTION OF LORD RUSSELL. 205 

the Council was sent to wait at his gate, to stop him if he had offered 
to go out; yet his back-gate was not watched, so that he might have 
gone away, if he had chosen it. He had heard that he was named 
by Rumsey; but forgetting the meeting at Sheppard's, he feared no 
danger from a man he had always disliked, and never trusted. Yet 
he thought proper to send his wife amongst his friends for advice. 
They were at first of different minds; but as he said he apprehended 
nothing from Rumsey, they agreed that his flight would look too like 
a confession of guilt. This advice coinciding with~his own opinion, 
he determined to stay where he was. As soon as the King arrived, a 
messenger was sent to bring him before the Council. When he 
appeared there, the King told him, that nobody suspected him of any 
design against his person ; but that he had good evidence of his being in 
designs against his government. He was examined upon the infor- 
mation of Rumsey, concerning the meeting at Sheppard's, to which 
Rumsey pretended to have carried a message, requiring a speedy 
resolution, and to have received for answer that Mr. Trenchard had 
failed them at Taunton. Lord Russell totally denied all knowledge 
of this message. When the examination was finished, Lord Russell 
was sent a close prisoner to the Tower. Upon his going in, he told 
his servant Taunton that he was sworn against, and they would have 
his life. Taunton said, he hoped it would not be in the power of 
his enemies to take it. Lord Russell answered, * Yes ; the devil is 
loose!' 

"From this moment he looked upon himself as a dying man, and 
turned his thoughts wholly upon another world. He read much in 
the Scriptures, particularly in the Psalms; but whilst he behaved 
with the serenity of a man prepared for death, his friends exhibited 
an honourable anxiety to preserve his life. Lord Essex would not 
leave his house, lest his absconding might incline a jury to give more 
credit to the evidence against Lord Russell. The Duke of Monmouth 
sent to let him know he would come in and run fortunes with him, 
if he thought it could do him any service. He answered, it would be 
of no advantage to him to have his friends die with him. 

" A committee of the Privy Council came to examine him. Their 
inquiries related to the meeting at Sheppard's, the rising at Taunton, 
the seizing of the guards, and a design for a rising in Scotland. In 
answer to the questions put to him, he acknowledged he had been at 
Sheppard's house divers times, and that he went there with the Duke 
of Monmouth; but he denied all knowledge of any consultation tend- 
ing to an insurrection, or to surprise the guards. He remembered 
no discourse concerning any rising in Taunton ; and knew of no 
design for a rising in Scotland. He answered his examiners in a 
civil manner, but declined making any defence till his trial, when he 
had no doubt of being able to prove his innocence. The charge of 
treating with the Scots, as a thing the council were positively assured 
of, alarmed his friends; and Lady Russell desired Dr. Burnet to 
examine who it could be that had charged him ; but upon inquiry, it 
appeared to be only an artifice to draw confession from him ; and 
notwithstanding the power which the court possessed to obtain the 
condemnation of their enemies, by the perversion of law, the servility 
of judges, and the submission of juries, Lord Russell might still have 
contested his life with some prospect of success, had not a new cir- 
cumstance occurred to cloud his declining prospects. This was the 



206 APPREHENSION OF LORD HOWARD. 

apprehension and confession of Lord Howard. At first, he had talked 
of the whole matter with scorn and contempt ; and solemnly professed 
that he knew nothing which could hurt Lord Eussell. The King 
himself said, he found Lord Howard was not amongst them, and he 
supposed it was for the same reason which some of themselves had 
given for not admitting Oates into their secrets, namely, that he was 
such a rogue they could not trust him. But when the news was 
brought to Lord Howard that West had delivered himself, Lord 
Eussell, who was with him, observed him change colour, and asked 
him if he apprehended any thing from him ? He replied that he had 
been as free with him as any man. Hampden saw him afterwards 
under great fears, and desired him to go out of the way, if he thought 
there was matter against him, and he had not strength of mind to 
meet the occasion. A warrant was now issued against him on the 
evidence of West, and he was taken, after a long search, concealed in 
a chimney of his own house. He immediately confessed all he knew 
and more. 

* * * * 

" Hampden and Lord Russell were imprisoned upon Lord Howard's 
information ; and, four days afterwards, Lord Russell was brought to 
trial : but, in order to possess the public mind with a sense of the 
blackness of the plot, Walcot, Hone, and Rouse were first brought to 
trial, and condemned upon the evidence of Keeling, Lee, and West, 
of a design to assassinate the King."* 

It is not necessary to enter at large into the trial. We 
shall give the main points of it, on which sentence was 
founded ; but when it is considered that the bench had lately 
had an accession of accommodating judges ; that Jeffries was 
one of the counsel for the prosecution ; that the jury, illegally 
returned, were not allowed to be challenged ; that the wit- 
nesses were perjured, contradicted themselves, and swore to 
save their lives ; that one of them (Lord Howard) was a man 
of such infamous character, that the King said, " he would not 
hang the worst dog he had, upon his evidence ;" that neverthe- 
less the testimonies of the most honourable men against him 
were not held to injure his evidence, and that a crowd of them 
in Lord Russell's favour were of as little avail in giving the 
prisoner the benefit of a totally different reputation, it will 
be allowed, that our pages need not be occupied with details, 
which in fact had nothing to do with his condemnation. 

The ground on which Lord Russell was sentenced to death 
was, that he had violated the law in conspiring the death of 
the King. He argued, that granting the charge to be true 
(which he denied), it was not that of conspiring the death of 

* " Life of William Lord Russell, with some Account of the Times 
in which he lived." By Lord John Russell, 3rd edition, 1820, vol. ii. s 
p. 18, &c. 



CHARGE AGAINST LORD RUSSELL. 207 

the King, but " a conspiracy to levy war;" that this was not 
treason within the statute (which it was not) ; and that if it 
had been, a statute of Charles II. made the accusation null 
and void, because the time had expired to which the operation 
of it was limited. The lawyers, who in fact had been com- 
pelled by their imperfect enactment to lay the charge on the 
ground of conspiring the King's death, had so worded the 
statute of Charles, that, like the oracles of old, it was capable 
of a double construction. But not to observe that the prisoner 
ought to have had the benefit of the doubt (and it has been 
generally thought that the statute was clearly the other way), 
they could never get rid of the necessity of assuming that the 
King's death was intended ; whereas, nothing can be more 
plain, not only from their own enactments, but from all history, 
that an insurrection, though against a King himself, may have 
no such object ; so that here was a man to be sacrificed to 
the spirit of the law (which by its very nature should have 
saved him,) while the court, in this and a thousand other 
instances, was violating the letter of it. 

" Of the Eye House Plot," says Mr. Fox, " it may be said, much 
more truly than of the Popish, that there was in it some truth, mixed 
with much falsehood. It seems prohable, that there was among some 
of the accused a notion of assassinating the King ; but whether this 
notion was ever ripened into what may be called a design, and much 
more, whether it were ever evinced by such an overt act as the law 
requires for conviction, is very doubtful. In regard to the conspira- 
tors of higher ranks, from whom all suspicion of participation in the 
intended assassination has been long since done away, there is un- 
questionable reason to believe that they had often met and consulted, 
as well for the purpose of ascertaining the means they actually 
possessed, as for that of devising others, for delivering their country 
from the dreadful servitude into which it had fallen ; and thus far 
their conduct appears clearly to have been laudable. If they went 
further, and did anything which could be really construed into an 
actual conspiracy to levy war against the King, they acted, consider- 
ing the disposition of the nation at that time, very indiscreetly. But 
whether their proceedings had ever gone this length, is far from cer- 
tain. Monmouth's communications with the King, when we reflect 
on all the circumstances of those communications, deserve not the 
smallest attention ; nor, indeed, if they did, does the letter which he 
afterwards withdrew prove anything upon this point. And it is an 
outrage to common-sense to call Lord Grey's narrative, written as 
he himself states in his letter to James II., while the question of his 
pardon was pending, an authentic account. That which is most cer- 
tain in this affair is, that they had committed no overt act, indicating 
the imagining the King's death, even according to the most strained 
construction of the statute of Edward III. ; much less was any such 
act legally proved against them. And the conspiracy to levy war was 



202 CHARACTER OF LORD RUSSELL. 

not treason, except by a recent statute of Charles II., the prosecutions 
upon which were expressly limited to a certain time, which in these 
cases had elapsed ; so that it is impossible not to assent to the opinion 
of those who have ever stigmatised the condemnation and execution 
of Kussell as a most flagrant violation of law and justice." * 

The truth, respecting Lord Russell seems to be, that he was 
a man of the highest character and the best intentions, who 
suffered himself, not very discreetly, to listen to projects 
which he disapproved, in the hope of seeing better ones sub- 
stituted. There can be no doubt that he wished to make 
changes in an illegal government, short of interfering with 
the King's possession of the throne. He had a right, by law, 
to endeavour it. He had openly shown himself anxious to do 
so ; and the doubt can be as little, that the Duke of York, 
from that moment marked him out for his revenge. Russell 
implied as much in the paper he gave the sheriff; showing, 
indeed, such a strong sense of it, as (considering the truly 
Christian style of the paper in general) is very affecting. It 
has been justly said of him, that he was a man rather eminent 
for his virtues than his talents. We cannot help thinking 
that the paucity of words, to which he repeatedly alludes him- 
self, and which was very evident during his trial, did him 
serious injury, both then and before. We mean, that if he 
had had a greater confidence, he might have advocated his 
cause to very solid advantage, perhaps to his entire acquittal. 
It is touching to observe, in the account of his behaviour 
after sentence, how the excitement of the occasion loosened 
his tongue, and inspired him with some turns of thought, 
more lively, perhaps, than he had been accustomed to. His 
character has been respectfully treated by all parties since the 

* "History of the Reign of James the Second." Introductory 
Chapter. It is worth while, as a puzzle for the reader, to give here 
the contested point in the statute, which Lord Russell's enemies 
thought so clear against him, and his friends so much in his favour. 
13 Car. H. "Provided always, that no person be prosecuted for any 
of the offences in this act mentioned, other than such as are made and 
declared to be high treason, unless it be by order of the King's Majesty, 
his heirs or successors, under his or their sign manual, or by order of 
the Council Table of his Majesty, his heirs or successors, directed unto 
the attorney-general for the time being : or some other counsel learned 
to his Majesty, his heirs or successors, for the time being : nor shall 
any person or persons, by virtue of this present act, incur any of the 
penalties herein before-mentioned, unless he or they be prosecuted 
within six months next after the offence committed, and indicted 
thereupon within three months after such prosecution ; anything 
herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding." 



INTERCOURSE OF RUSSELL WITH FRANCE. 209 

Revolution, and his death lamented. A startling charge, 
however, was brought against him and Sidney, in consequence 
of the discovery of a set of papers belonging to Barillon, the 
French Ambassador of that time, in which Sidney's name 
appears set down for five hundred pounds of secret service 
money from the French Government, and Eussell is described 
as having interviews with Barillon's agent, Rouvigny, tending 
to prevent a war disagreeable both to Louis and the English 
patriots. The vague allusions of some modern writers, 
together with an unsupported assertion of Ralph Montague, 
the intriguing English Ambassador in France, that money 
was to be distributed in Parliament " by means of William 
Russell, and other discontented people," have tended to lump 
together in the public mind the two charges occasioned by 
these documents. But they are quite distinct. Lord Russell 
had nothing to do with the money-list, in which the name of 
Sidney appears. The amount of the matter is this. Charles II. 
was always pretending to go to war with France, chiefly to 
get money for his debaucheries, and partly to raise an army 
which he might turn against the constitution. The nation, in 
their hatred of Louis's anti-protestant bigotry, and their old 
and less warrantable propensity to fight with those whom 
they publicly considered as their natural enemies (a delusion, 
we trust, now going by), were always in a state to be deceived 
by Charles on this point ; and the patriots were as regularly 
perplexed how to agree to the wishes of the King and people, 
knowing as they did, the former's insincerity, loth to give him 
more money to squander, and yet anxious to show their dislike 
of an arbitrary neighbour, and afraid of his being in collision 
with their prince. Their greatest fear, however, was upon 
this last point: it was very strong at the juncture in question ; 
and therefore, when Louis gave them to understand, through 
his agent, that he himself was desirous of avoiding a war, 
Russell certainly does appear to have allowed the agent to talk 
with him on the subject, and to have expressed a willingness 
to influence the votes of Parliament accordingly. There was 
a further understanding that Louis was to complete the mutual 
favour, by assisting to obtain a dissolution of Parliament, in 
case the peace should continue ; for the patriots expected very 
different things from a dissolution at that time (1678), than 
what it produced afterwards. Russell's noble biographer 
justly observes, that for the truth of these statements we are 
to trust Rouvigny's report, coming through the hands of 

P 



210 INFLECTIONS ON LORD RUSSELL'S 

Barillon: but granting them to be true, lie thinks there was 
nothing criminal in the intercourse. He observes, that, in the 
first place, Russell was Rouvigny's kinsman by marriage, 
being first cousin to his wife, which accounts for the com- 
mencement of the intercourse ; and, secondly, 

•' The imminent danger," he says, " which threatened us from the 
conduct of France abetting the designs of Charles, cannot, at this day, 
be properly estimated. At the very time when Parliament was giving 
money for a war, Lord Danby was writing, by his master's order, to 
beg for money as the price of peace. We shall presently see, that 
five days after the House of Commons had passed the act for a supply, 
Lord Danby wrote to Paris, that Charles expected six millions yearly 
from France. Had Louis been sincere in the project of making 
Charles absolute, there can be no doubt that it might have been easily 
accomplished. Was not this sufficient to justify the popular party in 
attempting to turn the battery the other way ? The question was 
not, whether to admit foreign interference, but whether to direct 
foreign interference, already admitted, to a good object. The conduct 
of Lord Russell, therefore, was not criminal; but it would be difficult 
to acquit him of the charge of imprudence. The object of Louis 
must have been, by giving hopes to each party in turn, to obtain the 
command of both. Charles, on the other hand, was ready to debase 
himself to the lowest point, to maintain his alliance with Prance ; any 
suspicion, therefore, of a connection between Louis and the popular party 
would have rendered him more and more dependent; till the liberties of 
England might at last have been set up to auction at Versailles."* 

This is impartial. But surely an imprudence so extremely 
dangerous, and an intercourse on any terms with an envoy's 
agent, the nature of which it must have been necessary to 
conceal, partook of a disingenuousness and selfwill that can- 
not be held innocent. That Lord Russell had the best inten- 
tions is granted ; but his principles were specially opposed by 
the doctrine of " doing evil, that good might come;" and if it 
be argued that good men are sometimes defeated in their in- 
tentions by not imitating the less scrupulous conduct of evil 
ones, it is to be replied, that there is no end of the re -actions 
consequent on such imitations, nor any bounds, on the other 
hand, to be put to the good consequences of a perfect example, 
even should its very perfection retard them. Good causes 
are not lost for want of passion and energy, but for that defect 
of faith and openness, which is the worst destroyer of both, 
and the loss of which is the worst hazard produced by a defect 
of example. We should be surprised that the patriots, while 
they were about it, did not denounce Charles's anti-constitu- 
tional behaviour more than they did, and openly demand their 
* Life, as above, vol. i., p. 121. 



CONDUCT AND CHARACTER. 211 

tights as a matter of course ; but it is easy to account for it 
upon the supposition that they were hampered -with court 
connections, and not sure of one another. 

The worst thing to be said of Lord Russell (for as to the 
letters he wrote for pardon, they must be considered as ob- 
tained from him by his friends and a tender wife) is, that 
when Lord Stafford, the victim of a plot charged on the 
papists, was sentenced to death, Russell opposed the King's 
privilege of dispensing with a barbarous part of the execution ; 
so unworthy the rest of their character can men be rendered 
by party feeling, and so little do they foresee what they may 
themselves require in a day of adversity. When Charles II. 
was applied to on the same point in behalf of Lord Russell, 
he is reported to have said, "Lord Russell shall find I am 
possessed of that prerogative, which in the case of Lord Staf- 
ford he thought fit to deny me." The sarcasm (if made — 
for there is no real authority for it) was cruel ; but it is not 
to be denied, that Lord Stafford, a man old and feeble, whose 
protestations of innocence called forth tears from the spectators 
when he was on the scaffold, might have thought Russell's 
conduct equally so. Let us congratulate ourselves, that the 
fiery trials which men of all parties have gone through, have 
enabled us to benefit by their experience, to be grateful for 
what was noble in them, and to learn (with modesty) how to 
avoid what was infirm. 

Lord Russell, besides the general regard of posterity, has 
left two glorious testimonies to his honour— his behaviour in 
his last days, .and the inextinguishable grief of one of the best of 
women. The latter, the celebrated Lady Rachael Russell, the 
daughter of Charles's best servant, Southampton, threw her- 
self at the King's feet, " and pleaded," says Hume, " with 
many tears, the merit and loyalty of her father, as an atone- 
ment for those errors into which honest, however mistaken, 
principles had seduced her husband. These supplications 
were the last instance of female weakness (if they deserve the 
name) which she betrayed. Finding all applications vain, 
she collected courage, and not only fortified herself against the 
fatal blow, but endeavoured by her example to strengthen the 
resolution of her unfortunate lord."* 

Echard says, that Charles refused her a reprieve of six 
weeks. If so, he probably feared some desperate attempt in 
Russell's favour; which, in fact, was proposed, as we shall 
* Hume's History of England, vol. x. chap. 69. 

P2 



212 EFFORTS TO SAVE LORD RUSSELL. 

see ; and it is possible, that remembering what had happened 
to Charles L, and conscious of his own deserts, he might really 
have thought that Lord Eussell would willingly have seen him 
put to death ; for Bapin tells us that he said, in answer to 
Lady Eachael, "How can I grant that man six weeks, who, if 
it had been in his power, would not have granted me six 
hours?"* And Lord Dartmouth in his notes upon Burnet, tells 
us that when his (Dartmouth's) father represented to the King 
the obligations which a pardon would lay upon a great family, 
and the regard that was due to Southampton's daughter and 
her children, the King answered, " All that is true ; but it is 
as true, that if I do not take his life, he will soon have mine;" 
"which," says Dartmouth, "would admit of no reply." "f 
Some, however, have said, that the King would have granted 
Eussell his life, if he had not been afraid of his brother, the 
Duke of York ; and as an instance of what was thought of the 
characters of these two princes, whether the story is true or 
not, it was added, that Charles did not like to hear any dis- 
courses about the pardon, because he could not grant it ; 
whereas James would hear anything, though he resolved to 
grant nothing. 

Every other effort was made to save the live of Eussell. 

" Money," says Burnet, "was offered to the Lady Portsmouth, and to 
all that had credit, and that without measure. He was pressed to 
send petitions and submissions to the King and to the Duke ; but he 
left it to his friends to consider how far these might go, and how they 
were to be worded. All that he was brought to was, to offer to live 
beyond sea, in any place that the King should name ; and never to 
meddle any more in English affairs. But all was in vain. Both King 
and Duke were fixed in their resolutions ; but with this difference, as 
Lord Bochester afterwards told me, that the Duke suffered some, 
among whom he was one, to argue the point with him, but the King 
could not bear the discourse. Some said, that the Duke moved that 
he might be executed in Southampton Square before his own house, 
but that the King rejected that as indecent. So Lincoln's Inn Fields 
was appointed for the place of his execution." J 

As a last resource Lord Cavendish offered to attack the 
coach on either side with a troop of horse, and take his friend 
out of it ; but Eussell would not consent to bring any one 
into jeopardy on his behalf. 

It has been said that Lincoln's Inn Fields was chosen, in 
order that the people might witness the triumph of the Court, 

* Ra pin's History of England, 1731, vol. xiv., p. 333. 

+ Burnet's History of his Own Times. 

J Burnet's History of his Own Times, 12mo., 1725, vol. ii.,p. 260. 



LETTERS TO THE KING. 213 

in seeing him led through the city; but others have reason- 
ably observed upon this, that as he was to be taken from 
Newgate, the desire of making him a spectacle to the citizens 
would have been better gratified by his being carried to the 
old place of execution, the Tower. It is most probable, that 
Lincoln's Inn Fields was selected, as being the nearest feasible 
spot to the great town property of the Bedford family; 
Bloomsbury lying opposite, and Covent garden on one side. 

The following is the letter addressed to the King by 
Russell's father, followed by that of Russell himself, which 
Burnet has mentioned as being drawn from him by his 
friends. 

"To the King's most Excellent Majesty. 

" The humble petition of William, Earl of Bedford : 
" Humbly sheweth; 

" That could your petitioner have been admitted into your presence, 
he would have laid himself at your royal feet, in behalf of his unfor- 
tunate son, himself, and his distressed and disconsolate family, to 
implore your royal mercy, which he never had the presumption to 
think could be obtained by any indirect means. But shall think 
himself, wife, and children, much happier to be left but with bread 
and water, than to lose his dear son for so foul a crime as treason 
against the best of princes ; for whose life he ever did, and ever shall 
pray, more than for his own. 

" May God incline your Majesty's heart to the prayers of an afflicted 
old father, and not bring grey hairs with sorrow to my grave. 

" Bedford." 

"To the King's most Excellent Majesty. 

" The humble petition of William Russell: 
" Most humbly sheweth; 

" That your petitioner does once more cast himself at your Majesty's 
feet, and implores, with all humility, your mercy and pardon, still' 
avowing that he never had the least thought against your Majesty's 
life, nor any design to change the government ; but humbly and 
sorrowfully confesses his having been present at those meetings, which 
he is convinced were unlawful, and justly provoking to your Majesty; 
but being betrayed by ignorance and inadvertence, he did not decline 
them as he ought to have done, for which he is truly and heartily 
sorry ; and, therefore, humbly offers himself to your Majesty, to be 
determined to live in any part of the world which you shall appoint, 
and never to meddle any more in the affairs of England, but as your 
Majesty shall be pleased to command me. 

"May it therefore please your Majesty to extend your royal favour 
and mercy to your petitioner, by which he will be for ever engaged to 
pray for your Majesty, and to devote his life to your service. 

" William Russell.'' 

The third is to the Duke of York. It is certainly to be 
regretted, that these letters were drawn from a patriot, 
willing, there is no doubt, to h^v§ endured all extremities 



214 LETTER TO THE DUKE OF YORK. 

without compromising the dignity of conscious right : but 
the reader will bear in mind what has been said of them ; 
and we shall see presently what the writer said of the present 
one. 

" May it please your Highness; 

" The opposition I have appeared in to your Highness's interest has 
been such, as I have scarce the confidence to be a petitioner to you, 
though in order to the saving of my life. Sir, God knows what I did 
did not proceed from any personal ill-will, or animosity to your royal 
Highness, but merely because I was of opinion, that it was the best 
way for observing the religion established by law, in which, if I was 
mistaken, yet I acted sincerely, without any ill end in it. And as for 
any base design against your person, I hope your Royal Highness will 
be so just to me as not to think me capable of so vile a thought. But 
I am now resolved, and do faithfully engage myself, that if it shall 
please the King to pardon me, and if your Royal Highness will inter- 
pose in it, I will in no sort meddle any more, but will be readily 
determined to live in any part of the world which his Majesty shall 
prescribe, and will never fail in my daily prayers, both for his 
Majesty's preservation and honour, and your Royal Highness's happi- 
ness, and will wholly withdraw myself from the affairs of England, 
unless called by his Majesty's orders to serve him, which I shall never 
be wanting to do, to the uttermost of my power. And if your Royal 
Highness will be so gracious to me, as to move on my account, as it 
will be an engagement upon me, beyond what I can in reason expect, 
so it will make the deepest impressions on me possible ; for no fear of 
death can work so much with me, as so great an obligation will for 
ever do upon me. May it please your Royal Highness, your Royal 
Highness's most humble and most obedient servant, 

"W. Russell." 

"Newgate, July 16th, 1683." 

Burnet says of this last letter, which he tells us was written 
at the "earnest solicitations" of Lady Rachael, that as Russell 
was folding it up, he said to him, " This will be printed, and 
will be selling about the streets as my submission, when I am 
led out to be hanged." 

All efforts failed, and the patriot and husband composed 
himself to die. The touching particulars of his last days 
we shall extract from the account of his friend Bishop Burnet. 
It is one that, as it contains no disputed points, may be safely 
relied on; and indeed, if we had not wished to show how 
interested we are in the case of this advancer of public right, 
and how anxious to spare no proper trouble for our readers, 
we might safely have copied the whole case from the lively 
pages of that historian, whose writings, whatever may have 
been his faults of partizanship and complexion, have risen in 
value, in proportion as documents come to light. A great 



russell's la.st days. 215 

modern statesman, equally qualified to judge of it, both as a 
politician and a man, alludes with interesting emotion to 
Burnet's account of his last hours. Speaking of the dying 
behaviour of Eussell and Sidney, he says, " In courage they 
are equal, but the fortitude of Russell, who was connected 
with the world by private and domestic ties, which Sidney 
was not, was put to the severer trial ; and the story of the 
last days of this excellent man's life fills the mind with such 
a mixture of tenderness and admiration, that I know not any 
scene in history that more powerfully excites our sympathy, 
or goes more directly to the heart." * 

" The last week of his life," says Burnet, " he was shut up all the 
morning as he himself desired. And about noon I came to him, and 
staid with him till night. All the while he expressed a very Christian 
temper, without sharpness or resentment, vanity or affectation. His 
whole behaviour looked like a triumph over death. Upon some occa- 
sions, as at table, or when his friends came to see him, he was decently 
cheerful. I was by him when the sheriffs came to show him the 
warrant for his execution. He read it with indifference ; and when 
they were gone he told me it was not decent to be merry with such a 
matter, otherwise he was near telling Rich (who, though he was now 
on the other side, yet had been a member of the House of Commons, and 
had voted for the exclusion), that they should never sit together in 
that house any more to vote for the bill of exclusion. The day before 
his death he fell a bleeding at the nose ; upon that he said to me 
pleasantly, I shall not now let blood to divert this : that will be done 
to-morrow. At night it rained hard, and he said, such a rain to- 
morrow will spoil a great show, which was a dull thing in a rainy 
day. He said, the sins of his youth lay heavy upon his mind ; but he 
hoped God had forgiven them, for he was sure he had forsaken them, 
and for many years he had walked before God with a sincere heart. 
If in his public actings he had committed errors, they were only the 
errors of his understanding; for he had no private ends, nor ill designs 
of his own in them; he was still of opinion that the King was limited 
by law, and that when he broke through those limits, his subjects 
might defend themselves and restrain him. He thought a violent 
death was a very desirable way of ending one's life ; it was only the 
being exposed to be a little gazed at, and to suffer the pain of one 
minute, which, he was confident, was not equal to the pain of drawing 
a tooth. He said he felt none of those transports that some good 
people felt ; but he had a full calm in his mind, no palpitation at heart, 
nor trembling at the thoughts of death. He was much concerned at 
the cloud that seemed to be now over his country ; but he hoped his 
death would do more service than his life could have done. 

" This was the substance of the discourse between him and me. 
Tillotson was oft with him that last week. We thought the party 
had gone too quick in their consultations, and too far; and that resist- 
ance in the condition we were then in was not lawful. He said he 

* Mr. Fox, in his history above-mentioned, 



216 bishop burnet's account 

had leisure to enter into discourses of politics ; but he thought a 
government limited by law was only a name, if the subjects might 
not maintain those limitations by force; otherwise all was at the dis- 
cretion of the Prince : that was contrary to all the notions he had 
lived in of our government .* But, he said, there was nothing among 
them but the embryos of things that were never like to have any 
effect, and they were now quite dissolved. He thought it was neces- 
sary for him to leave a paper behind him at his death : and, because 
he had not been accustomed to draw such papers, he desired me to 
give him a scheme of the heads fit to be spoken to, and of the order in 
which they should be laid ; which I did. And he was three days 
employed for some time in the morning to write out his speech. He 
ordered four copies to be made of it, all which he signed ; and gave 
the original with three of the copies to his lady, and kept the other to 
give to the sheriffs on the scaffold. He writ it with great ease, and 
the passages that were tender he writ in papers apart, and showed 
them to his lady and to myself, before he writ them out fair. He was 
very easy when this was ended. He also writ a letter to the King, in 
which he asked pardon for every thing he had said or done contrary 
to his duty, protesting he was innocent as to all designs against his 
person or government, and that his heart was ever devoted to that 
which he thought was his Majesty's true interest. He added that, 
though he thought he had met with hard measures, yet he forgave all 
concerned in it, from the highest to the lowest ; and ended, hoping 
that his Majesty's displeasure at him would cease with his own life, 
and that no part of it should fall on his wife and children. The day 
before his death he received the sacrament from Tillotson with much 
devotion : and I preached two short sermons to him, which he heard 
with great affection ; and we were shut up till towards the evening. 
Then he suffered his children that were very young, and some few of 
his friends, to take leave of him ; in which he maintained his con- 
stancy of temper, though he was a very fond father. He also parted 
from his lady with a composed silence ; and as soon as she was gone, 
he said to me, ' The bitterness of death is passed ; ' for he loved and 
esteemed her beyond expression, as she well deserved it in all respects. 
She had the command of herself so much that at parting she gave him 
no disturbance. He went into his chamber about midnight, and I 
stayed all night in the outward room. He went not to bed till about 
two in the morning, and was fast asleep at four, when, according to 
his order, we called him. He was quickly dressed, but would lose no 
time in shaving, for, he said, he was not concerned in his good looks 
that day." 

* * • * # 

" Lord Russell," continues Burnet, " seemed to have some satisfac- 
tion to find that there was no truth in the whole contrivance of the 
Rye Plot ; so that he hoped that infamy, which now blasted their 
party, would soon go off. He went into his chamber six or seven 
times in the morning, and prayed by himself, and then came out to 
Tillotson and me; he drank a little tea and some sherry. He wound 
up his watch, and said, now he had done with time, and was going to 



* Burnet and Tillotson thought so too, when James II. afterwards 
forced the church to declare one way or other, 



of lord russell's last days. 217 

eternity. He asked what he should give the executioner : I told him 
ten guineas : he said, with a smile, it was a pretty thing to give a fee 
to have his head cut off. When the sheriffs called him about ten 
o'clock, Lord Cavendish was waiting below to take leave of him. 
They embraced very tenderly. Lord Russell, after he had left him, 
upon a sudden thought came back to him, and pressed him earnestly 
to apply himself more to religion, and told him what great comfort 
and support he felt from it now in his extremity. Lord Cavendish 
had very generously offered to manage his escape, and to stay in 
prison for him while he should go away in his clothes ; but he would 
not hearken to the motion. The Duke of Monmouth had also sent 
me word to let him know, that if he thought it could do him any 
service, he would come in and run fortunes with him. He answered, 
it would be of no advantage to him to have his friends die with him. 
Tillotson and I went in the coach with him to the place of execution. 
Some of the crowd that filled the streets wept, while others insulted ; 
he was touched by the tenderness that the one gave him, but did not 
seem at all provoked by the other. He was singing psalms a great 
part of the way, and said, he hoped to sing better very soon.* As he 
observed the great crowds of people all the way, he said to us, 'I 
hope I shall quickly see a much better assembly.' When he came to 
the scaffold, he walked about it four or five times. Then he turned to 
the sheriffs, and delivered his paper. He protested that he had always 
been far from any designs against the King's life or government. He 
prayed God would preserve both, and the Protestant religion. He 
wished all Protestants might love one another, and not make way for 
Popery by their animosities." 

Of the paper given by Russell to the sheriffs, Burnet has 
given the following honest abridgment. This testament to 
patriotism made a great sensation. To posterity, who have 
so benefited by its spirit, it is surely still of great interest. 

" The substance of the paper he gave them," says Burnet, '* was, 
first, a profession of his religion, and of his sincerity in it ; that he 
was of the Church of England, but wished all would unite together 
against the common enemy ; that churchmen would be less severe, 
and dissenters less scrupulous. He owned he had a great zeal against 
Popery, which he looked on as an idolatrous and bloody religion ; but 
that, though he was at all times ready to venture his life for his 
religion or his country, yet that would never have carried him to a 
black or wicked design. No man ever had the impudence to move to 

* In his Journal, Burnet says that he often sung " within himself," 
but that the words were not audible. When his companion asked 
him what he was singing, he said the beginning of the 119th Psalm. 
It is stated in the Life by his descendant (who has added some 
original passages from papers at Woburn), that "just as they were 
entering Lincoln's Inn Fields, he said, ' This has been to me a place 
of sinning, and God now makes it the place of my punishment.' " 
He had lived freely in his youth, though he is not the Kussell spoken 
of in the Memoirs of Grammont, as many are led to believe by the 
engravings of him inserted in that work. The person there men- 
tioned was a cousin. 



218 

him anything with relation to the Ring's life : he prayed heartily for 
him, that in his person and government he might be happy, both in 
this world and the next. He protested that in the prosecution of the 
Popish Plot he had gone on in the sincerity of his heart, and that he 
never knew of any practice with the witnesses. He owned he had 
been earnest in the matter of the exclusion, as the best "way, in his 
opinion, to secure both the King's life and the Protestant religion, and 
to that he imputed his present sufferings ; but he forgave all con- 
cerned in them, and charged his friends to think of no revenges. He 
thought his sentence was hard, upon which he gave an account of all 
that had passed at Shepherd's. Prom the heats that were in choosing 
the sheriffs, he concluded that matter would end as it now did, and 
he was not much surprised to find it fall upon himself ; he wished it 
might end in him ; killing by forms of law was the worst sort of 
murder. He concluded with some very devout ejaculations. 

"After he had delivered this paper, he prayed by himself; then 
Tillotson prayed with him. After that he prayed again by himself, 
and then undressed himself and laid his head on the block, without 
the least change of countenance ; and it was cut off at two strokes." 

The following additional particulars are from Burnet's 
"Journal:"— 

"When my lady went, he said he wished she would give over 
beating every bush, and running so about for his preservation. But 
when he considered that it would be some mitigation of her sorrow 
afterwards, that she left nothing undone that could have given any 
probable hopes, he acquiesced : and, indeed, I never saw his heart so 
near failing him, as when he spake of her. Sometimes I saw a tear 
in his eye, and he would turn about and presently change the dis- 
course. 

"At ten o'clock my lady left him. He kissed her four or five 
times ; and she kept her sorrows so within herself, that she gave him 
no disturbance by their parting. After she was gone, he said, ' Now 
the bitterness of death is passed,' and ran out a long discourse con- 
cerning her — how great a blessing she had been to him ; and said 
what a misery it would have been to him, if she had not had that 
magnanimity of spirit, joined to her tenderness, as never to have 
desired him to do a base thing for the saving of his life ; whereas, 
otherwise, what a week should I have passed, if she had been crying 
on me to turn informer, and be a Lord Howard ; though he then re- 
peated what he often before said, that he knew of nothing whereby 
the peace of the nation was in danger; and that all that ever was, was 
either loose discourse, or at most embryos that never came to any- 
thing, so that there was nothing on foot to his knowledge. 

" As we came to turn into Little Queen Street, he said, ' I have 
often turned to the other hand with great comfort, but now I turn to 
this with greater,' and looked towards his own house; and then, as the 
Dean of Canterbury, who sat over against him, told me, he saw a tear 
or two fall from him. 

" When he had lain down, I looked once at him and saw no change 
in his looks ; and though he was still lifting up his hands, there was 
no trembling, though, in the moment in which I looked, the execu- 
tioner happened to be laying the axe to his neck to direct him to 



LADY RUSSELL, 219 

take aim. I thought it touched him, but I am sure he seemed not to 
mind it." 

The widow of Lord Russell, daughter of the Lord South- 
ampton above mentioned, the most honest man ever known 
to have been in the service of Charles the Second, was grand- 
daughter of Shakspeare's Southampton, and appears to have 
united in her person the qualities of both. She was at once 
a pattern of good sense, and of romantic affection. Nor 
are the two things incompatible, when either of them 
exist in the highest degree, as she proved during the re- 
mainder of her life ; for though she continued a widow all 
the rest of it, and it was a very long one, and though she 
never ceased regretting her lord's death, and had great 
troubles besides, yet the high sense she had of the duties of a 
human being enabled her to enjoy consolations that ordinary 
pleasure might have envied; first, in the education of her 
children, and secondly, in the tranquillity which health and 
temperance forced upon her. Her letters, with which the 
public are well acquainted, are not more remarkable for the 
fidelity they evince to her husband's memory, than for the 
fine sense they display in all matters upon which the pre- 
judices of education had left her a free judgment, and 
especially for their delightful candour. It has been thought 
that the blindness into which she fell in her old age was 
owing to weeping ; but Mr. Howell, the judicious editor of 
the " State Trials," informs us, upon the authority of " a 
very learned, skilful, and experienced physiologist," " that a 
cataract, which seems," he says, " to have been the malady 
of Lady Eachael's eyes, is by no means likely to be produced 
by weeping."* 

We will here insert a few of the most touching passages 
from the " Letters of Lady Russell" (seventh edition, 1819). 
On the 30th of September, she writes thus to her friend. Dr 
Fitzwilliam : — 

" I endeavour to make the best use I can of both (a letter and 
prayer which the Doctor sent her) ; but I am so evil and unworthy a 
creature, that though I have desires, yet I have no disposition, or 
worthiness, towards receiving comfort." And again: — "I know I 
have deserved my punishment, and will be silent under it ; but yet 
secretly my heart mourns, and cannot be comforted, because I have 
not the dear companion and sharer of all my joys and sorrows. I want 

* For complete reports of all the trials connected with the Rye 
House Plot, and for several pamphlets written pro and con upon Lord 
Russell's case, see the " State Trials," vol. ix., beginning at p. 357. 



220 AFFECTING PASSAGES FROM 

him to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep with ; all these things 
are irksome to me now ; all company and meals I could avoid, if it 
might be. Yet all this is, that I enjoy not the world in my own way, 
and this same hinders my comfort. When I see my children before 
me, I remember the pleasure he took in them ; this makes my heart 
shrink." 

On the 21st July, 1685, the anniversary of her husband's 
death, two years after it, she writes thus : — 

" My languishing weary spirit rises up slowly to all good ; yet I 
hope by God's abundant grace, in time, your labours will work the 
same effect in my spirits : they will, indeed, in less time on others 
better disposed and prepared than I am, who in the day of affliction 
seem to have no remembrance with due thankfulness of prosperity." 

In a letter written the 4th October, 1686, she says, speak- 
ing of a recovery of one of her children from sickness, — 

" I hope this has been a sorrow I shall profit by ; I shall, if God 
will strengthen my faith, resolve to return him a constant praise, and 
make this the season to chase all secret murmurs from grieving my 
soul for what is past, letting it rejoice in what it should rejoice, his 
favour to me, in the blessings I have left, which many of my betters 
want, and yet have lost their chiefest friend also. But, oh, Doctor ! 
the manner of my deprivation is yet astonishing." 

The following is dated five years after her loss. She is 
speaking of a letter she wrote once a week to Dr. Fitzwilliam. 
Her grief had now begun to taste the sweets of patience and 
temperance ; but we see still how real it is : — 

u I can't but own there is a sort of secret delight in the privacy of 
one of thost mournful days ; I think, besides a better reason, one is, 
that I do not tie myself up as I do on other days ; for, God knows, my 
eyes are ever ready to pour out marks of a sorrowful heart, which I 
shall carry to the grave, that quiet bed of rest." 

In 1692, Lady Russell writes less patiently, but shortly 
afterwards appears to have regained her composure ; and in 
Letter 134, there is a remark on the blessings of health, and 
on the comfort of being able to do one's duty, if we aim at it. 
In 1711, she lost her only son, the Duke of Bedford, in his 
31st year; and six months afterwards was deprived of one of 
her daughters, who died in childbed. It was on this occasion 
that an affecting annecdote is told. She had another daughter 
who happened to be in childbed also ; and as it was neces- 
sary to conceal from her the death of her sister, this admirable 
woman assumed a cheerful air, and in answer to her daughter's 
anxious inquiries, said, with an extraordinary colouring of the 
fact, for which a martyr to truth could have loved her ? " J 
have seen your sister out of bed to-day." 



lady russell's letters. 221 

We intended not to omit the following charming passage 
from her letters, and therefore add it here. It is in the letter 
last quoted: — 

"My friendships have made all the joys and troubles of my life ; 
and yet who would live and not love? Those who have tried the 
insipidness of it would, I believe, never choose it. Mr. Waller says, 
'tis (with singing) all we know they do above! And 'tis enough; for 
if there is so charming a delight in the love, and suitableness in 
humours, to creatures, what must it be to the clarified spirits to love 
in the presence of God ! " 

The passage from Waller is, — 

" What know we of the blest above, 
But that they sing and that they love ? " 

Certainly, if ever there was an angel upon earth this 
woman was one. Compare the above extracts with a letter 
from her to her husband, written in the year 1681, and 
published in the work of Lord John Russell, vol. ii., p. 2. It 
is a true, loving, happy wife's letter, and renders the contrast 
inexpressibly affecting. 

The present ducal family of Bedford have the honour to be 
lineally descended from these two excellent persons, and to 
derive their very dukedom from public virtue — a rare patent. 
And they have shown that they estimate the honour. What 
must not Lady Russell have felt when James II., within six 
years after the destruction of her husband, was forced to give 
up his throne? And what, above all, must she not have felt, 
when she heard of the answer given by her aged father-in-law 
to the same prince, who had the meanness, or want of 
imagination, to apply to him in his distress? "My Lord," 
said James to the Earl of Bedford, " you are an honest man, 
have great credit, and can do me signal service." " Ah, sir," 
replied the Earl, "I am old and feeble, but I once had a 
son." The King is said to have been so struck with this 
reply, that he was silent for some minutes. With this 
anecdote we may well terminate our account of the patriot 
Russell.* 

One remark, however, we must make. It has been 
asserted, that the great reason why the Whigs of those days 
wished to keep the Catholics out of power was the dread of 
losing their estates as well as political influence, and of being 

* We quote the Earl of Bedford's reply from Granger's Biographical 
History of England, not being able to refer to Orrery, who we believe 
is the authority for it. Burnet's Journal is to be found at the end of 
Lord Russell's Life, by his descendants. 



222 



NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 



obliged to give up the Abbey lands. There may have been 
a good deal of truth in this, and yet the rest of their feelings 
have been very sincere. Men may be educated in undue 
notions of the value of wealth and property, and yet prove 
their possession of nobler thoughts, when brought to heroical 
issues of life and death. 

The house in this square (Lincoln's Inn,) at the corner of 
Great Queen Street, with a passage under its side, was once 
called Newcastle House, and was occupied by the well-known 
fantastical duke of that name, Minister of George II. Pennant- 
says it was built about the year 1686, " by the Marquis of 
Powis, and called Powis House, and afterwards sold to the 
late noble owner. The architect was Captain "William Winde. 




NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 



*B is said," he adds, " that government had it once in con- 
templation to have bought and settled it officially on the 
great seal. At that time it was inhabited by the lord keeper, 
Sir Nathan Wright." It is at present occupied by the Society 
for the diffusion of the Bible. 

The Marquis of Powis, here mentioned, had scarcely built 
his house in the square where Lord Russell was beheaded, 
when he saw his lordship's destroyer forced to leave hJ3 



LUDICROUS INCIDENT AT NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 223 

throne. The Marquis followed his fortunes, and was created 
by him Duke of Powis. 

A laughable, and, we believe, true story, connected with 
the Duke of Newcastle's residence in this house, is told in 
a curious miscellany intitled the " Lounger's Common-Place 
Book." 

" This nobleman," says the writer, " with many good points, and 
described by a popular contemporary poet as almost eaten up by his 
zeal for the house of Hanover, was remarkable for being profuse of 
his promises on all occasions, and valued himself particularly on being 
able to anticipate the words or the wants of the various persons who 
attended his levees before they uttered a word. This sometimes led 
him into ridiculous embarrassments ; but it was his tendency to lavish 
promises, which gave occasion for the anecdote I am going to relate. 

i( At the election of a certain borough of Cornwall, where the oppo- 
site interests were almost equally poised, a single vote was of the 
highest importance; this object, the Duke, by well-applied arguments, 
and personal application, at length attained, and the gentleman he 
recommended gained his election. 

" In the warmth of gratitude, his Grace poured forth acknowledg- 
ments and promises without ceasing, on the fortunate possessor of 
the casting vote ; called him his best and dearest friend ; protested 
that he should consider himself as for ever indebted ; that he would 
serve him by night or by day. 

" The Cornish voter, an honest fellow, as things go, and who would 
have thought himself sufficiently paid, but for such a torrent of 
acknowledgments, thanked the Duke for his kindness, and told him, 
' The supervisor of excise was old and infirm, and if he would have 
the goodness to recommend his son-in-law to the commissioners in 
case of the old man's death, he should think himself and his family 
bound to render Government every assistance in his power, on any 
future occasion.' 

" ' My dear friend, why do you ask for such a trifling employment?' 
exclaimed his Grace, ' your relation shall have it at a word's speaking, 
the moment it is vacant.' — ' But how shall I get admitted to you my 
Lord? for, in London, I understand, it is a very difficult business to 
get a sight of you great folks, though you are so kind and complaisant 
to us in the country.' — ' The instant the man dies,' replied the pre- 
mier, used to and prepared for the freedom of a contested election, — 
* the moment he dies, set out post-haste for London; drive directly to 
my house, by night or by day, sleeping or waking, dead or alive, 
thunder at the door; I will leave word with my porter to show you 
up-stairs directly, and the employment shall be disposed of according 
to your wishes.' 

" The parties separated; the Duke drove to a friend's house in the 
neighbourhood, where he was visiting, without a wish or a design of 
seeing his new acquaintance till that day seven years; but the memory 
of a Cornish elector, not being loaded with such a variety of subjects, 
was more retentive. The supervisor died a few months after, and the 
ministerial partisan relying on the word of a peer, was conveyed to 
London post-haste, and ascended with alacrity the steps of a large 
house, now divided into three, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the corner of 
Great Queen Street. 



224 LUDICROUS INCIDENT AT NEWCASTLE HOUSE. 

" The reader should he informed that precisely at the moment when 
the expectations of a considerable party of a borough in Cornwall 
were roused by the death of a supervisor, no less a person than the 
King of Spain was expected hourly to depart; an event in which the 
Minister of Great Britain was particularly concerned. 

" The Duke of Newcastle, on the very night that the proprietor of 
the decisive vote was at his door, had sat up anxiously expecting 
despatches from Madrid: wearied by official business and agitated 
spirits, he retired to rest, having previously given particular instruc- 
tions to his porter not to go to bed, as he expected every minute a 
messenger with advices of the greatest importance, and desired he 
might be shown up-stairs the moment of his arrival. 

" His Grace was sound asleep ; for, with a thousand singularities, 
of which the rascals about him did not forget to take advantage, his 
worst enemies could not deny him the merit of good design, that best 
solace in a solitary hour. The porter, settled for the night in his 
chair, had already commenced a sonorous nap, when the vigorous arm 
of the Cornish voter roused him from his slumbers. 

" To his first question, 'Is the Duke at home?' the porter replied, 
'Yes; and in bed, but has left particular orders that come when you 
will, you are to go up to him directly/ — ' God for ever bless him, a 
worthy and honest gentleman,' cried our applier for the vacant post, 
smiling and nodding with approbation at a Prime Minister's so accu- 
rately keeping his promise; ' how punctual his Grace is! I knew he 
would not deceive me. Let me hear no more of lords and dukes not 
keeping their words. I believe, verily, they are as honest and mean 
as well as other folks, but I can't always say the same of those who 
are about them.' Repeating these words as he ascended the stairs, 
the burgess of was ushered into the Duke's bedchamber. 

" ' Is he dead ? ' exclaimed his Grace, rubbing his eyes, and scarcely 
awaked from dreaming of the King of Spain, 'Is he dead?' ' Yes, 
my lord,' replied the eager expectant, delighted to find that the elec- 
tion promise, with all its circumstances, was so fresh in the Minister's 
memory. ' When did he die ? ' ' The day before yesterday, exactly 
at half-past one o'clock, after being confined three weeks to his bed, 
and taking a power of doctor's stuff; and I hope your Grace will be as 
good as your word, and let my son-in-law succeed him.' 

" The duke, by this time perfectly awake, was staggered at the im- 
possibility of receiving intelligence from Madrid in so short a space 
of time, and perplexed at the absurdity of a king's messenger applying 
for his son-in-law to succeed the King of Spain : ' Is the man drunk 
or mad ; where are your despatches ? ' exclaimed his Grace, hastily 
drawing back his curtain ; when, instead of a royal courier, his eager 
eye recognised at the bedside the well-known countenance of his friend 
in Cornwall, making low bows, with hat in hand, and ' hoping my lord 
would not forget the gracious promise he was so good as to make in 
favour of his son-in-law at the last election at .' 

"Vexed at so untimely a disturbance, and disappointed of news 
from Spain, he frowned for a few seconds, but chagrin soon gave way 
to mirth at so singular and ridiculous a combination of opposite 
circumstances. Yielding to the irritation, he sank on the bed in a 
violent fit of laughter, which, like the electrical fluid, was communi- 
cated in a moment to his attendants." * 

* Lounger's Common-Place Book, 1805, 8vo. vol. i., p. 301. 



225 



CHAPTER VI. 

Great Queen Street — Former fashionable Houses there — Lewis and 
Miss Pope, the Comedians — Martin Folkes — Sir Godfrey Kneller 
and his Vanity — Dr. Radcliffe — Lord Herbert of Cherbury — 
Nuisance of Whetstone Park — The Three Dukes and the Beadle — 
Rogues and Vagabonds in the Time of Charles II — Former Theatres 
in Vere Street and Portugal Street — First appearance of Actresses 
— Infamous deception of one of them by the Earl of Oxford — 
Appearance of an avowed Impostor on the Stage — Anecdotes of the 
Wits and fine Ladies of the Time of Charles, connected with the 
Theatre in this Quarter — Kynaston, Betterton, Nokes, Mrs. Barry, 
Mrs. Mountford, and other Performers — Rich — Joe Miller — Carey 
Street and Mrs. Chapone — Clare Market — History, and Specimens, 
of Orator Henley — Duke Street and Little Wild Street — Anecdotes 
of Dr. Franklin's Residence in those Streets while a Journeyman 
Printer. 

REAT Queen Street, in the time of the 
Stuarts, was one of the grandest and 
most fashionable parts of the town. 
The famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury 
died there. Lord Bristol had a house 
in it, Lord Chancellor Finch, and the 
Conway and Paulet families. Some of 
the houses towards the west retain 
pilasters and other ornaments, probably 
as Pennant observes, the abodes in question. 
Little thought the noble lords that a time would come, when 
a player should occupy their rooms, and be able to entertain 
their descendants in them ; but in a house of this description, 
lately occupied by Messrs. Airman the booksellers, died Lewis, 
the comedian, one of the most delightful performers of his 
class, and famous to the last for his invincible airiness and 
juvenility. Mr. Lewis displayed a combination rarely to be 
found in acting, that of the fop and the real gentleman. With 
a voice, a manner, and a person, all equally graceful and light, 
and features at once whimsical and genteel, he played on the 
top of his profession like a plume. He was the Mercutio ot 
the age, in every sense of the word mercurial. His airy, 
breathless voice, thrown to the audience before he appeared, 
was the signal of his winged animal spirits ; and when he 
gave a glance of his eye, or touched his finger at another's 
ribs, it was the very jpunctum saliens of playfulness and 
inuendo. We saw him take leave of the public, a man of 

Q 




indicating, 



226 



LEWIS AND MISS POPE. 



sixty -five, looking not more than half the age, in the character 
of the Copper Captain ; and heard him say, in a voice broken 
by emotion, that " for the space of thirty years, he had not 
cnce incurred their displeasure." 

Next door but one to the Freemasons' Tavern (westward), 
for many years lived another celebrated comic performer, Miss 
Pope, one of a very different sort, and looking as heavy and 
insipid as her taste was otherwise. She was an actress of the 
highest order for dry humour ; one of those who convey the 
most laughable things w T ith a grave face. Churchill, in the 
Rosciad, Avhen she must have been very young, mentions her 
as an actress of great vivacity, advancing in a "jig," and 
performing the parts of Cherry and Polly Hone} r comb. There 
was certainly nothing of the Cherry and Honeycomb about 
her when older ; but she was an admirable Mrs. Malaprop. 

Queen Street continued to be a place of fashionable resort 
for a considerable period after the Eevolution. As we have 
been speaking of the advancement of actors in social rank, we 
will take occasion of the birth of Martin Folkes in this street, 
the celebrated scholar and antiquary, to mention that he was 
one of the earliest persons among the gentry to marry an 
actress. His wife was Lucretia Bradshaw. It may be thought 




OLD HOUSES IN GREAT QUEEN STREET. 

worth observing by the romantic, that the ladies who were 
first selected to give this rise to the profession, had all some- 
thing peculiar in their Christian names. Lord Peterborough 
married Anastasia Robinson, and the Duke of Bolton, Lavinia 
Fenton. 



SIR GODFREY KNELLER AND RADCLIFFE. 227 

Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Eadcliffe the physician, lived in 
this street. We mention them together because they were 
neighbours, and there is a pleasant anecdote of them in con- 
junction. The author of a book lately published, describes 
their neighbourhood as being in Bow Street ; but Horace 
Walpole, the authority for the story, places it in the street 
before us ; adding, in a note, that Kneller " first lived in 
Durham Yard (in the Strand), then twenty-one years in 
Covent Garden (Ave suppose in Bow Street), and lastly in 
Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields." H Kneller," says 
Walpole, " was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As 
there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he 
permitted the latter to have a door into his garden ; but Rad- 
cliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller 
sent him word he must shut up the door. Eadcliffe replied 
peevishly, ' Tell him he may do anything with it but paint 
it.' ' And I,' answered Sir Godfrey, ' can take anything from 
him but physic.'"* 

Kneller, besides being an admired painter (and it is sup- 
posed from one of his performances, the portrait of a Chinese, 
that he could have been admired by posterity, if he chose), 
was a man of wit ; but so vain, that he is described as being 
the butt of all the wits of his acquaintances. They played 
upon him undoubtedly, and at a great rate ; but it has been 
suggested by a shrewd observer, that while he consented to 
have his vanity tickled at any price, he humoured the joke 
himself, and was quite aware of what they were at. Nor is 
this inconsistent with the vanity, which would always make 
large allowances for the matter of fact. The extravagance it 
would limit where it pleased ; the truth remained ; and Sir 
Godfrey, as Pope said, had a large appetite. With this pro- 
bability a new interest is thrown upon the anecdotes related 
of his vanity, with the best of Avhich the reader is accordingly 
presented. Kneller was a German, born at Lubec, so that his 
English is to be read with a foreign accent. 

The younger Richardson tells us, that Gay read Sir Godfrey 
a copy of verses, in which he had pushed his flattery so far, 
that he was all the while in dread lest the knight should 
detect him. When Kneller had heard this through, he said, 
in his foreign style and accent, " Ay, Mr. Gay, all what you 
have said is very fine, and very true ; but you have forgot 
one thing, my good friend ; by G — , I should have been a 
* Anecdotes of Painting, in his Works, 4to. vol. iii., p. 364. . 

Q2 



228 VANITY OF SIR tiUDFEEY KNELLER. 

general of an army ; for when I was at Venice, there was a 
girandole, and all the place of St. Mark was in a smoke of 
gunpowder, and I did like the smell, Mr. Gay ; should have 
been a great general, Mr. Gay !" 

Perhaps it was this real or apparent obtuseness which 
induced Gay to add " engineering" to his other talents, in 
the verses describing Pope's welcome from Greece ; — 

" Kneller amid the triumph bears his part, 
Who could (were mankind lost) a new create : 
What can the extent of his vast soul confine ? 
A painter, critic, engineer, divine." 

The following is related on the authority of Pope : — 

" Old Jacob Tonson got a great many fine pictures, and two of him- 
self, from him, by this means. Sir Godfrey was very covetous, but 
then he was very vain, and a great glutton ; so he played these pas- 
sions against the others ; besides telling him that he was the greatest 
master that ever was, sending him, every now and then, a haunch of 
venison, and dozens of excellent claret. ' 0, my G — , man,' said he 
once to Vander Gucht, 'this old Jacob loves me; he is a very good 
man ; you see he loves me, he sends me good things; the venison was 
fat.' Old Geekie, the surgeon, got several fine pictures of him too, anl 
an excellent one of himself; but then he had them cheaper, for he 
gave nothing but praises ; but tnen his praises were as fat as Jacob's 
venison ; neither could be too fat for Sir Godfrey." 

Pope related the following to Spence : — 

" As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst he was 
drawing a picture, he stopt, and said, ' I can't do as well as I should 
do, unless you flatter me a little, Mr. Pope! You know I love to be 
flattered.' I was for once willing," continues Pope, " to try how 
far this vanity would carry him ; and after considering a picture 
which he had just finished, for a good while very attentively, I said 
to him in French (for he had been talking for some time before in that 
language), ' On lit dans les Ecritures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit 
l'homme apres son image : mais, je crois, que s'il voudroit faire un 
autre a present, qu'il le feroit apres l'image que voila.' Sir Godfrey 
turned round, and said very gravely, ' Vous avez raison, Monsieur 
Pope; par Dieu, je le crois aussi.' " 

It must not be omitted that Kneller was a kind-hearted 
man. At Whitton, where he had a seat, he was justice of the 
peace, and, 

" Was so much more swayed," says Walpole, ft by equity than law, 
that his judgments, accompanied with humour, are said to have 
occasioned those lines by Pope : — 

" I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit, 
Who sent the thief (that stole the cash) away, 
And punish'd him that put it in his way." 
"This alluded to his dismissing a soldier who had stolen a joint of 



DR. RADCLIFFE. 229 

meat, and accused the butcher of having tempted him by it. When- 
ever Sir Godfrey was applied to, to determine what parish a poor man 
belonged to, he always inquired which parish was the richer, and 
settled the poor man there ; nor would he ever sign a warrant to dis- 
train the goods of a poor man who could not pay a tax."* 

Poor Radcliffe, after reigning as a physician so despotically, 
that Arbuthnot, in his projected map of diseases, was for 
putting him up at the corner of it disputing the empire of the 
world, became a less happy man than Sir Godfrey, by reason 
of his falling in love in his old age. He set up a coach, 
adorned with mythological paintings, — at least, Steele says 
so ; but soon had to put it in mourning for the death of his 
flame, who was a Miss Tempest, one of the maids of honour. 
Radcliffe was the Tory physician, and Steele, in the " Tatler," 
with a party spirit that was much oftener aggrieved than 
provoked in that good-natured writer, was induced, by some 
circumstance or other, perhaps Radcliffe's insolence, to make 
a ludicrous description of him, " as the mourning Esculapius, 
the languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe." Steele 
accuses him of avarice. Others have said he was generous. 
He was the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, and 
made other magnificent bequests ; which prove nothing 
either way. But it is not favourable to a reputation for 
generosity, to own ( as he did ), that he was fond of spunging, 
and to avoid the paying of bills. However, when he lost 
5,000£. in a speculation, he said " he had nothing to do but 
to go up so many pair of stairs to make himself whole again." 
He was undoubtedly a very clever physician, though he made 
little use of books. Like many men who go upon their 
own grounds in this way, he had an abrupt and clownish 
manner, which he probably thought of use. According to 
Richardson, he one day said to Dr. Mead, " Mead, I love you; 
now I will tell you a sure secret to make your fortune. Use 
all mankind ill." It is worth observing, that Mead acted on 
the reverse principle, and made double the fortune of his 
adviser. Radcliffe is is said have attended the lady of Judge 
Holt, in a bad illness, with unusual assiduity, " out of pique 
to her husband ; " a very new kind of satire. He used to 
send huffing messages to Queen Anne, telling her that he 
would not come, and that she only had the vapours ; and 
when King William consulted him on his swollen ankles and 
thin body, Radcliffe said he " would not have his Majesty's 

* Walpole's Works, ut supra, vol. iii., p. 364. 



230 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. 

two legs for his three kingdoms ; " a speech which it was not 
in the nature of royalty to forgive. His death is said to have 
been hastened by his refusal to attend on Queen Anne in her 
last illness ; which so exasperated the populace that he was 
afraid to leave his country house at Carshalton, where he 
died. He lived in Bow Street when he first came to London ; 
and afterwards in Bloomsbury Square. 

But the most remarkable inhabitant of Queen Street was 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of those extraordinary indivi- 
duals who, with- a touch of madness on the irascible side, and 
subject to the greatest blindness of self-love, possess a profound 
judgment on every other point. Such persons are supposed to 
be victims of imagination ; but they are rather mechanical 
enthusiasts ( though of a high order ), and, for want of an 
acquaintance with the imaginative, become at the mercy of 
the first notion which takes their will by suprise. Lord 
Herbert, who in the intellectual part was intended for a 
statist and a man of science, was unfortunately one of the 
hottest of Welchmen in the physical. Becoming a Knight 
of the Bath, he took himself for a knight-errant, and fancied 
he was bound to fight everybody he met with, and to lie 
under trees in the fields of Holland. He thought Revelation 
a doubtful matter, and so he had recourse to the Deity for a 
revelation in his particular favour to disprove it. We have 
related an anecdote of him at Northumberland House, and 
shall have more to tell ; but the account of his having 
recourse to Heaven for the satisfaction of his doubts of its 
interference, must not be omitted here. Perhaps it took 
place in this very street. His Lordship was the first Deist 
in England that has left an account of his orjinions. Speak- 
ing of the work he wrote on this subject, he says : — 

" My book ' De Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione verisimili, 
possibili, et a falso,' having been begun by me in England, and formed 
there in all its principal parts, was about this time finished ; all the 
spare hours which I could get from my visits and negotiations being 
employed to perfect this work ; which was no sooner done, but that 
I communicated it to Hugo Grotius — that great scholar, who, having 
escaped his prison in the Low Countries, came into France, and was 
much welcomed by me and Monsier Tieleners, also one of the greatest 
scholars of his time ; who, after they had perused it, and given it more 
commendations than is fit for me to repeat, exhorted me earnestly to 
print and publish it ; howbeit, as the frame of my whole work was 
so different from anything which had been written heretofore, I found 
I must either renounce the authority of all that I had written for- 
merly, concerning the method of finding out truth, and consequently 



lord Herbert's book " de veritate." 231 

insist upon my own way, or hazard myself to a general censure con- 
cerning the whole argument of my book ; I must confess it did not a 
little animate me, that the two great persons above-mentioned did so 
highly value it ; yet, as I knew it would meet with much opposition, 
I did consider whether it was not better for me for a while to sup- 
press it. 

"Being thus doubtful in my chamber one fair day in the summer, 
my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining clear, 
and no wind stirring, I took my book, ' De Veritate/ in my hand, 
and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: — 

" ' Oh, thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon 
me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech thee of thy 
infinite goodness to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to 
make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book 
'De Veritate;' if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some 
sign from heaven ; if not, I shall suppress it.' 

" I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud though gentle 
noise came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth) which 
did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and 
that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print 
my book. This (how strange soever it may seem) I protest, before 
the eternal God, is true ; neither am I any way superstitiously 
deceived herein ; since I did not only hear the noise, but, in the 
serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my 
thinking see the place from whence it came."* 

" How could a man," justly observes Walpole on this pas- 
sage, " who doubted of partial, believe individual revelation ! 
What vanity to think his book of such importance to the 
cause of truth, that it could extort a declaration of the Divine 
will, when the interest of half mankind could not !" Yet the 
same writer is full of admiration of him in other respects. It 
is well observed by the editor of the Autobiography (in reply 
to the doubts thrown on his lordship's veracity respecting his 
chivalrous propensities, the consequences of which always fell 
short of duels), that much of the secret might be owing " to 
his commanding asj^ect and acknowledged reputation ; and a 
little more to a certain perception of the Quixote in his 
character, with which it might be deemed futile to contend. 
His surprising defence of himself against the attack of Sir 
John Ayres, forcibly exhibits his personal strength and mas- 
tery ; and his spirited treatment of the French Minister, 
Luynes, and the general esteem of his contemporaries, suffi- 

* Life of Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, in the Autobiography. 
p. 145. It is an honour to Grotius, who wrote a book, De Veritate, 
on the other side of the question, that he encouraged so renowned an 
antagonist to publish : though, perhaps, he saw less danger in it than 
singularity. 4,t all events, he could anticipate no harm from the 
close. 



232 WHETSTONE PARK. 

ciensly attest his quick feeling of national and personal dig* 
nity, and general gallantry of bearing." There is no doubt, 
in short, that Lord Herbert of Cherbury was a brave, an 
honest, and an able man, though with some weaknesses, both 
of heat and vanity, sufficient to console the most common- 
place. 

With all this elegance of neighbourhood, Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, in the time of Charles II., had one eyesore of an 
enormous description, in a place behind Holborn row, entitled 
Whetstone Park. It is now a decent passage between Great 
and Little Turnstiles. 

" It is scarcely necessary," says Mr. Malcolm, " to remind the 
reader of a well-known fact, that all sublunary things are subject to 
change : — he who passes through the Little Turnstile, Holborn, at 
present, will observe on the left hand, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a 
narrow street, composed of small buildings, on the corner of which is 
inscribed Whetstone Park. The repose and quiet of the place seem 
to proclaim strong pretensions to regular and moral life in the inha- 
bitants ; and well would it have been for the happiness of many a 
family, had the site always exhibited the same appearance. On the 
contrary, Whetstone Park contributed to increase the dissoluteness of 
manners which distinguished the period between 1660 and 1700. Being 
a place of low entertainment, numerous disturbances occurred there, 
and rendered it subject to the satire and reprehension even of 'Poor 
Robin's Intelligencer,' a paper almost infamous enough for the pro- 
duction of a keeper of this theatre of vice. The publication alluded 
to says, in 1676, 'Notwithstanding the discourses that have been to 
the contrary, the boarding-school is still continued here, where a set 
of women may be readily untaught all the studies of modesty or 
chastity; to which purpose they are provided with a two-handed 
volume of impudence, loosely bound up in greasy vellum, which is 
tied by the leg to a wicker chair (as you find authors chained in a 
library), and is always ready to give you plain instructions and 
directions in all matters relating to immorality or irreligion.' * * 

" Incomprehensible as it certainly is," continues our author, " the 
brutal acts of a mob are sometimes the result of a just sense of the ill 
consequences attending vice ; and, although almost every individual 
composing it is capable of performing deeds which deserve punish- 
ment from the police, they cannot collectively view long and deliberate 
offences against the laws of propriety, without assuming the right of 
reforming them. ' The Loyal and Impartial Mercury' of Sept. 1, 
1682, has this paragraph: — ' On Saturday last, about 500 apprentices, 
and such like, being got together in Smithfield, went into Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, where they drew up, and marching into Whetstone Park, 
fell upon the lewd houses there, where, having broken open the doors, 
they entered, and made great spoil of the goods; of which the con- 
stables and watchmen having notice, and not finding themselves 
strong enough to quell the tumult, procured a party of the King's 
guards who dispersed them, and took eleven, who were committed to 
New Prison; yet on Sunday night they came again, and made worse 



THE THREE DUKES AND THE BEADLE. 233 

havoc than before, breaking down all the doors and windows, and 
cutting the featherbeds and goods in pieces.' Another newspaper 
explains the origin of the riot by saying, ' that a countryman who 
had been decoyed into one of the houses alluded to, and robbed, 
lodged a formal and public complaint against them to those he found 
willing to listen to him in Smithfield, and thus raised the ferment.' "* 

In the " State Poems" is a doggrel set of verses on a tragical 
circumstance occasioned by a frolic of three of Charles's 
natural sons in this place. It is entitled " On the three Dukes 
killing the Beadle on Sunday morning, Feb. the 26th, 1671." 
A great sensation was made by this circumstance, which was 
naturally enough regarded as a signal instance of the conse- 
quences of Charles's mode of life. Our Grub Street writer 
selected his title well — the " Dukes," the " Beadle," and the 
" Sunday." His first four lines might have been put into 
Martinus Scriblerus, as a specimen of the Newgate style. 

" Near Holborn lies a park of great renown, 
The place, I do suppose, is not unknown : 
For brevity's sake the name I shall not tell, 
Because most genteel readers know it well." 

The three Dukes pick a quarrel with one poor damsel, and 
" murder" was cried u 

" In came the watch, disturbed with sleep and ale, 
By noises shrill, but they could not prevail 
T' appease their Graces. Strait rose mortal jars, 
Betwixt the night blackguard and silver stars; 
Then fell the beadle by a ducal hand, 
For daring to pronounce the saucy stand. 

# * * * 

See what mishaps dare e'en invade Whitehall, 

This silly fellow's death puts off the ball, 

And disappoints the Queen, poor little chuck ; ■ 

I warrant t'would have danced it like a duck. 

The fiddlers, voices, entries, all the sport, 

And the gay show put off, where the brisk court 

Anticipates, in rich subsidy coats, 

All that is got by necessary votes. 

Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent, the good, 

See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood."f 

The " subsidy coats" allude to Charles's raising money for 
his profligate expenditure under pretence of the public ser- 
vice. The last couplet would have done credit to a better 
satire. 

* Malcolm's Customs and Manners of London, from the Eoman In- 
vasion to the Year 1700, vol. i., p. 318. 

f Poems on Affairs of State, from the Time of Oliver Cronrwell to 
the Abdication of King James the Second, vol. i., p. 147. 



^Oi ROGUES AND VAGABONDS 

As we are upon the subject of a neighbourhood to which 
they apply, we shall proceed to give a few more extracts from 
Mr. Malcolm, highly characteristic of the lower orders of 
desperadoes in Charles's reign. 

" The various deceivers," he tells us, " who preyed upon the public 
at this time were exposed in a little filthy work called the * Canting 
Academy,' which went through more than one edition (the second is 
dated 1674). I shall select from it enough to show the variety of 
villany practised under their various names. The Ruffler was a 
wretch who assumed the character of a maimed soldier, and begged 
from the claims of Naseby, Edgehill, Newbury, and Marston Moor. 
Those who were stationed in the city of London were generally found 
in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden ; and their prey was people 
of fashion, whose coaches were attacked boldly ; and if denied, their 
owners were told, "Tis a sad thing that an old crippled cavalier 
should be suffered to beg for a maintenance, and a young cavalier 
that had never heard the whistle of a bullet should ride in his coach.' 

" There were people called Anglers, from the nature of their method 
of depredating, which was thus . — They had a rod or stick, with an 
iron hook affixed : this they introduced through a window, or any 
other aperture, where plunder might be procured, and helped them- 
selves at pleasure ; the day was occupied by them in the character 
of beggars, when they made their observations for the angling of the 
night. 

" Wild Rogues were the offspring of thieves and beggars, who re- 
ceived the rudiments of the art even before they left their mothers' 
backs : " To go into churches and great crowds, and to nim golden 
buttons off men's cloaks ; and being very little are shown how to 
creep into cellar windows, or other small entrances, and in the night 
to convey out thereat whatever they can find to the thievish receivers, 
who wait without for that purpose ; and sometimes do open the door 
to let in such who have designed to rob the house ; if taken, the ten- 
derness of their age makes an apology or an excuse for then" fault, and 
so are let alone to be hanged at riper years.' 

" Palliards or Clapperdogeons, were those women who sat and re- 
clined in the streets, with their own borrowed or stolen children 
hanging about them, crying through cold, pinching, or real disease, 
who begged relief as widows, and, in ,the name of their fatherless 
children, gaining by this artifice, ' a great deal of money, whilst her 
comrogue lies begging in the fields, with climes or artificial sores.' 
The way they commonly take to make them is by sperewort or arsenic, 
which will draw blisters ; or they take unslacked lime and soap, 
mingled with the rust of old iron : these being well tempered together, 
and spread thick upon two pieces of leather, they apply to the leg, 
binding it thereunto very hard, which in a very little time would fret 
the skin so that the flesh would appear all raw, &c. &c. 

" Fraters were impostors who went through the country with 
forged patents for briefs, and thus diverted charity from its proper 
direction. 

" Abram men were fellows whose occupations seem to have been 
forgotten. They are described in the 'Canting Academy' in these 
words : — ' Abram men are otherwise called Tom of Bedlams ; they 



IN THE TIME OF CHARLES H. 235 

are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands 
or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging 
down, a long stick with ribands streaming, and the like ; yet for all 
their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.'* 

" The Whip-Jacks have left us a specimen of their fraternity. 
They were counterfeit mariners, whose conversations were plentifully 
embellished with sea-terms, and falsehoods of their danger in the 
exercise of their profession. Instead of securing their arms and legs 
close to their bodies, and wrapping them in bandages (as the modern 
whip-jack is in the habit of doing, to excite compassion for the loss of 
limbs and severe wounds), the ancields merely pretended they had 
lost their all by shipwreck, and were reduced to beg their way to a 
sea-port, if in the country ; or to some remote one, if in London. 

"Mumpers. — The persons thus termed are described as being of 
both sexes : they were not solicitors for food, but money and cloathes. 
* The male mumper, in the times of the late usurpation, was clothed in 
an old torn cassock, begirt with a girdle, with a black cap, and a 
white one peeping out underneath.' "With a formal and studied 
countenance he stole up to a gentleman, and whispered him softly in 
the ear, that he was a poor sequestered parson, with a wife and many 
children. At other times, they would assume the habit of a decayed 
gentleman, and beg as if they had been ruined by their attachment 
to the royal cause. Sometimes the mumper appeared with an apron 
before him, and a cap on his head, and begs in the nature of a broken 
tradesman, who, having been a long time sick, hath spent all his re- 
maining stock, and so weak he cannot work ! The females of this 
class of miscreants generally attacked the ladies, and in a manner 
suited to make an impression on their finer feelings. 

" Domerars are such as counterfeit themselves dumb, and have a 
notable art to roll their tongues up into the roof of their mouth, that 
you would verily believe their tongues were cut out ; and, to make 
you have a stronger belief thereof, they will gape and show you where 
it was done, clapping in a sharp stick, and, touching the tongue, make 
it bleed — and then the ignorant dispute it no further.' 

" Patricos are the strolling priests: every hedge is their parish, 
and every wandering rogue their parishioner. The service, he saith, 
is the marrying of couples, without the Gospel, or Book of Common 
Prayer, the solemnity whereof is thus : the parties to be married find 
out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing the one on the one 
side and the other on the other, the patrico bids them to live together 
till death them part ; and, so shaking hands, the wedding is ended.' " f 

On the southern side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the back 
of Portugal Row, is Portugal Street, formerly containing 
a theatre, as celebrated as Covent Garden or Drury Lane 
is now. This was the Duke's Theatre, so called from the 
Duke of York, afterwards James II., who, at the Restoration, 
patronised one of the principal companies of players, as his 
brother Charles did the other. The latter was the Drury 
Lane company. Readers of theatrical history are generally 

* It is still a phrase with the vulgar to say, a man " shams Abram." 
f Manners and Customs, vol. i., p. 322. 



236 



FORMER THEATRES 



led to conclude that there was only one theatre in the Lincoln's 
Inn quarter ; but this is a mistake. There were at least two 
successive houses in two different places, though usually con- 
founded under the title of" the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields." 
The first was in Gibbon's tennis-court, in Vere Street, Clare 
Market, where the actors who had played at the Red Bull 
opened their performances in the year of the Restoration, 
under the direction of Killigrew, and with the title of King's 
Company. These in 1663 removed to Drury Lane. The 
Duke's, or Sir William Davenant's company, removed in 1662 
from Salisbury Court ( see Fleet Street ) to a new theatre " in 
Portugal Row," says Malone, " near Lincoln's Inn Fields." * 
Malone is a correct inquirer : so that he makes us doubt 
whether the name of Portugal Row did not formerly belong 
to Portugal Street. The latter is certainly meant, or he 




OLD THEATRE IN PORTUGAL STREET. 

would describe it as in and not near the Fields. Davenant's 
company performed here till 1671, when they quitted it to 
return to the renovated theatre in Salisbury Court, under the 
management of his son, Charles Davenant(the father being 
dead), and the famous Betterton, who had been Sir William's 
first actor. The two companies afterwards came together at 
Drury Lane, but again fell apart; and in 1695 the Duke's 
company (if its altered composition could still warrant the 
name), with Betterton remaining at its head, and Congreve 
* Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 320. 



IN VERE STREET AND PORTUGAL STREET. 237 

for a partner, again opened " the theatre in Lincoln's Inn 
Fields," which was rebuilt for the purpose, and is described 
as being in " the Tennis-court." Was this the tennis-court 
theatre in Vere Street ? or were there two tennis-courts, one 
in Vere Street, and one in Lincoln's Inn Fields ? We confess 
ourselves, after a diligent examination, unable to determine. 
At all events, the latest theatre of which we hear in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, was not in Vere Street. It stood in Portugal 
Street, on the east end of the present burial ground, just at 
the back of Surgeons' College, and was subsequently the 
china warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.* This 
theatre, which was built of red brick, and had a front facing 
the market, is the one generally meant by the theatre in Lin- 
coln's Inn Fields. It finally became celebrated for the harle- 
quinades of Eich; but, on his removal to Covent Garden, 
was deserted, and, after a short re-opening by Gifford from 
Goodman's Fields, finally ceased to be a theatre about the 
year 1737. Since that period Covent Garden and Drury Lane 
playhouses have had this part of the town to themselves. 

It is conjectured, that the first appearance of an actress on 
the English stage, to the scandle of the Puritans, and with 
many apologies for the "indecorum" of giving up the perfor- 
mances of female characters by boys, took place in the theatre 
in Vere Street, on Saturday, Dec. 8, 1660. The part first 
performed was certainly that of Desdemona ; a very fit one 
to introduce the claims of the sex."j* 

Mr. Malone has given us the prologue written for this 
occasion by Thomas Jordan ; which, as it shows the " sen- 
sation " that was made, sets us in a lively manner in the 
situation of the spectators, and gives a curious account of 
some of the male actors of gentle womanhood, we shall here 
repeat. It is entitled " A Prologue, to introduce the first 
Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called 
the Moor of Venice : " 

" I came unknown to any of the rest, 
To tell the news ; I saw the lady drest : 
The woman plays to-day ; mistake me not, 
No man in gown, or page in petticoat : 
A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't, 
If I should die, make affidavit on't. 
Do you not twitter, gentlemen ? I know 
You will be censuring : do it fairly, though ; 

* It has recently been pulled down to make room for the enlarge- 
ment of the museum of the College of Surgeons. 
f See Malone, pp. 135, 136. 



238 FIRST APPEARANCE OF ACTRESSES, 

'Tis possible a virtuous woman may 

Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play ; 

Play on the stage — where all eyes are upon her : 

Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour ? 

In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em ; 

The difference lies only in the custom. 

And let it be our custom, I advise ; 

I'm sure this custom's better than th' excise, 

And may procure us custom : hearts of flint 

Will melt in passion, when a woman's in't. 

But, gentlemen, you that as judges sit 

In the Star-chamber of the house — the pit, 

Have modest thoughts of her ; pray, do not run 

To give her visits when the play is done, 

"With ' damn me, you?- most humble servant, lady ;' 

She knows these things as well as you, it may be ; 

Not a bit there, dear gallants, she doth know 

Her own deserts, — and your temptations too. 

But to the point ■ — in this reforming age 

We have intents to civilize the stage. 

Our women are defective, and so sized, 

You'd think they were some of the guard disguised ; 

For to speak truth, men act, that are between 

Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen ; 

With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant, 

When you call Desdemona, enter giant. 

We shall purge everything that is unclean, 

Lascivious, scurrilous, impious, or obscene; 

And when we've put all things in this fair way, 

Barebones himself may come to see a play." * 

The epilogue, " which consists of but twelve lines, is in 
the same strain of apology." 

"And how do you like her ; Come, what is't ye drive at ? 
She's the same thing in public as in private, 
As far from being what you call a whore, 
As Desdemona injured by the Moor ; 
Then he that censures her in such a case, 
Hath a soul blacker than Othello's face. 
But, ladies, what think you ? for if you tax 
Her freedom with dishonour to your sex, 
She means to act no more, and this shall be 
No other play, but her own tragedy. 
She will submit to none but your commands, 
And take commission only from your hands." f 

From the nature of this epilogue, and the permission accorded 
by the ladies, the women actors appear to have met with all 
the success they could wish ; yet a prologue to the second 
part of Davenant's " Siege of Ehodes," acted in April, 1662, 

* Malone, p. 135. f Ibid. p. 136. 



INFAMOUS CONDUCT OF THE EARL OF OXFORD. 239 

shows us that the matter was still considered a delicate one 

upwards of a year afterwards. 

" Hope little from our poet's withered wit, 
From infant players scarce grown puppets jet ; 
Hope from our women less, whose bashful fear 
Wondered to see me dare to enter here : 
Each took her leave, and wished my danger past, 
And though I came hack safe and undisgraced, 
Yet when they spy the wits here, then I doubt 
No amazon can make them venture out, 
Though I advised them not to fear you much, 
For I presume not half of you are such." * 

It was in the Theatre at Vere Street that Pepys first saw a 
woman on the stage.f One of the earliest female performers 
mentioned by him was an actress whose name is not ascer- 
tained, but who attained an unfortunate celebrity in the part 
of Roxana in the " Siege of Rhodes." She was seduced by 
Aubery de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford of that name, under 
the guise of a private marriage — a species of villany which 
made a great figure in works of fiction up to a late period. 
The story is "got up" in detail by Madame Dunois, in her 
" History of the Court of Charles II. ;" J but it is told with 
more brevity in Grammont ; and as the latter, though apocry- 
phal enough, pretends to say nothing on the subject in which 
he is not borne out by other writers, his lively account may 
be laid before the reader. 

" The Earl of Oxford," says one of his heroines, "fell in love with 
a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke's theatre, who 
performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very 
fashionable new play; insomuch that she ever after retained that 
name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, 
if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents 
and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his 
passion; he had recourse to invectives and even spells; but all in 
vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he 
could neither eat nor drink; this did not signify to him; but his 
passion at length became so violent, that he could neither play nor 
smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of 
Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, you know, a very hand- 
some man; he is of the order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an 
air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you 
would suppose he was really possessed of some sense; but as soon as 
ever you hear him speak, you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. 
This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage, in 
due form, signed with his own hand; she would not, however, rely 

* Malone, p. 136. f Memoirs, ut supra, vol. i., p. 167. 

X Memoirs of the English Court in the Reign of Charles II., &c, 
by the Countess of Dunois, part ii., p. 71. 



240 THE GERMAN PEINCEPS. 

upon this; but the next day she thought there could be no danger, 
when the Earl himself came to her lodgings attended by a clergy- 
man, and another man for a witness; the marriage was accordingly 
solemnized with all due ceremonies, in the presence of one of her 
fellow-players, who attended as a witness on her part. You will 
suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to 
appear at court according to her rank, and to display the earl's arms 
upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When exami- 
nation was made concerning the marriage, it was found to be a mere 
deception: it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my lord's 
trumpeters, and the witness his kettle-drummer. The parson and 
his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over, and as 
for the other witness, he endeavoured to persuade her that the 
Sultana Roxana might have supposed, in some part or other of a 
play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the 
poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of God and man; 
both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this 
infamous imposition: in vain did she throw herself at the king's feet 
to demand justice; she had only to rise up again without redress; 
and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one 
thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Eoxana, instead of 
Countess of Oxford."* 

This scoundrel Earl (whose alleged want of sense is 
extremely probable, and was his best excuse, as well as the 
worst thing to say for the lady), died full of years and honours, 
and was buried in "Westminster Abbey. 

In 1664, Mr. Pepys witnessed a scene in the theatre in 
Portugal Street, which shows the extremity to which the 
speculation of managers and the curiosity of the British 
public can go. This was no other than the appearance of 
an imposter, called the German Princess, in the part of her 
own character, after having been tried for it at the Old 
Bailey. She was tried for bigamy, and acquitted; but she 
had inveigled a young citizen into marriage under pretence 
of being a German Princess, the citizen pretending at the 
same time to be a nobleman. The impudence of the thing 
was completed by the badness of her performance. Granger, 
however, who appears to have read a vindication of her, 
which she published, thinks she had great natural abilities. 

The following is curious : — 4th (Feb. 1666-7). 

" Soon as dined,' says Pepys, iC my wife and I out to the Duke's 
playhouse, and there saw Heraclius, an excellent play, to my extra- 
ordinary content; and the more from the house being very full, and 
great company; among others Mrs. Stuart, f very fine, with her 
locks done up in puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other 

* Memoirs of Count Grammont, 8vo. 1811, vol. ii. p. 142. 
f With whom Charles II. was in love — afterwards Duchess of 
Richmond. 



TEE duke's theatre. 241 

great ladies had their hair so, though I do not like it, but my wife do 
mightily; but it is only because she sees it is the fashion. Here I 
saw my Lord Rochester * and his lady, Mrs. Mallet, who hath after 
all this ado married him; and, as I hear some say in the pit, it is a 
great act of charity, for he hath no estate. But it was pleasant to 
see how everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of 
Ormond's son, came into the pit, towards the end of the play, who 
was a servant to Mrs. Mallett, and now smiled upon her, and she on 
him."t 

One little thinks, now-a-days, in turning into Portugal 
Street, that all the fashionable world, with the wits and poets, 
once thronged into that poor-looking thoroughfare, with its 
bailiffs at one end, and its butchers at the other. The differ- 
ence, however, between beaux and butchers was not so great 
at that time as it became afterwards ; though none arrogated 
the praise of high breeding more than the fine gentlemen of 
Charles II. Next year Pepys speaks of a fray at this house 
between Harry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham, in 
which the latter beat him, and took away his sword. Another 
time, according to his account, Rochester beat Tom Killigrew, 
at the Dutch Ambassador's, and in the King's presence. 
Blows from people of rank do not appear to have been 
resented as they would be now. 

In the following passage we have an author's first night 
before us, and that author the gallant Etherege, with dukes 
and wits about him in the pit. He makes, however, a very 
different figure in our eyes from what we commonly conceive 
of him, for he is unsuccessful and complaining. 

"My wife," says Pepys, "being gone before (6th Feb. 1667-8), I 
to the Duke of York's playhouse, where a new play of Etheridge's, 
called ' She would if she could;' and, though I was there by two 
o'clock, there was one thousand people put back that could not have 
room in the pit ; and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift 
to get into the 18c?. box, and there saw. But Lord! how full was the 
house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good 
in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I sat 
mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The 
play being done, I into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and 
raining; but could not find her, and so staid, going between the two 
doors and through the pit, an hour and a half, I think, after the play 
was done, the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk 
one with another. And among the rest here was the Duke of Buck- 
ingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my 
Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet; the last of 
whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were 

* The famous wit and debauchee. 
;-> f Pcpvs' Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 136. 



242 MANNERS OF THE TIMES OP CHARLES H. 

out of humour and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do 
nothing, nor could so much as sing a catch in it; and so was mightily 
concerned; while all the rest did through the whole pit blame the 
play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish 
and witty; but the design of the play and end mighty insipid. At 
last I did find my wife." 

The ensuing is a specimen of the manners of one of the fine 
ladies : — 

" 5th (May, 1668), Creed and I to the Duke of York's playhouse; 
and there, coming late, up to the balcony -box, where we find my 
Lady Castlemaine (the King's mistress) and several great ladies; and 
there we sat with them, and I saw the ' Impertinents ' once more than 
yesterday! and I for that reason like it, I find, the better too. By Sir 
Positive At-all I understand is meant Sir Robert Howard. My lady 
pretty well pleased with it; but here I sat close to her fine woman, 
Wilson, who indeed is very handsome, but they say with child by the 
King. I asked, and she told me this was the first time her lady had seen 
it, I having a mind to say something to her. One thing of familiarity I 
observed in my Lady Castlemaine ; she called to one of her women, 
another that sat by tins, for a little patch off of her face, and put it 
into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own by the 
the side other mouth; I suppose she feeling a pimple rising there."* 

More manners of this gallant reign. Pepys says he went 
to see a woman with a great bushy beard, " which pleased 
him mightily." 

" Thence to the Duke's playhouse, and saw 'Macbeth.' The King 
and Court there; and we sat just under them and my Lady Castle- 
maine, and close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose 
gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so something. And my 
wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I 
never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as 
they said, I heard, to one another. The King and Duke of York 
minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me; 
but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in the box over the King and my 
Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the King and he up to her; and 
so did my Lady Castlemaine once to see who it was; but when she 
saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire; which troubled me."t 

Modes of thinking. Mr. Pepys is of opinion that the 
"Tempest," which he saw at this house, is an "innocent" 
play; "no great wit, but yet good above ordinary plays." 
This appears to have been his general opinion of Shakspeare. 
That year he says, 

" After dinner to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw 
' Sir Martin Mar-all,' which I have seen so often, and yet am mightily 
pleased with it, and think it mighty witty, and the fullest of proper 
matter for mirth that was ever writ ; and I do clearly see that 
they do improve in their acting of it. Here a mighty company of 
citizens, 'prentices, and others ; and it makes me observe, that 

* Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 99. f Id. p. 222. 



KYNASTON*S FEMALE CHARACTERS. 243 

when I began first to be able to bestow a play on myself, I do 
not remember that I saw so many by half of the ordinary 'pren- 
tices and mean people in the pit, at 2s. 6c?. a piece, as now ; I 
going for several years no higher than the 12c?. and then the 18c?. 
places, though I strained hard to go in them when £ did : so 
much the vanity and prodigality of the age is to be observed in 
this particular." * 

What he calls the vanity of the age, was one of the best 
signs of its advancement. Plays, at the time above mentioned, 
began as early as they did before the civil wars ; and when 
they were over, people rode out in their coaches to take the 
air. Our author, when the King visited the theatre, speaks 
of being there by one o'clock to get a seat. Kynaston, a 
favourite actor at this bouse, used to be taken out airing 
by the ladies, in the dress which he wore as a female. Cib- 
ber mentions this particular among others in an entertaining 
account of Kynaston, whom the ladies do not appear to have 
spoiled : — 

"Though women," he says, ,w were not admitted to the stage till 
the return of King Charles, 3-et it coald not be so suddenly supplied 
with them, but that there was still a necessity, for some time, to put 
the handsomest young men into petticoats, which Kynaston was then 
said to have worn with success ; particularly in the part of Evadne, 
in the 'Maid's Tragedy,' which I have heard him speak of; and 
which calls to my mind a ridiculous distress that arose from these 
sort of shifts, which the stage was then put to. The King, coming 
a little before his usual time to a tragedy, found the actors not ready 
to begin, when his Majesty, not choosing to have as much patience 
as his good subjects, sent to them to know the meaning of it; upon 
which the master of the company came to the box, and rightly judg- 
ing that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly 
told his Majesty that the queen was not shaved yet: the King, whose 
good humour loved to laugh at a jest as well as to make one, accepted 
the excuse, which served to divert him till the male queen could be 
effeminated. In a word, Kynaston, at that time, was so beautiful a 
youth, that the ladies of quality prided themselves in taking him 
with them in their coaches to Hyde Park in his theatrical habit, after 
the play; which in those days they might have sufficient time to do, 
because plays then were used to begin at four o'clock : the hour that 
people of the same rank are now going to dinner. Of this truth I 
had the curiosity to inquire, and had it confirmed from his own 
mouth, in his advanced age : and, indeed, to the last of him, his 
handsomeness was very little abated; even at past sixty his teeth 
were sound, white and even, as one would wish to see in a reigning 
toast of twenty. He had something of a formal gravity in his mien, 
which was attributed to the stately step he had been so early confined 
to, in a female decency. But even that, in characters of superiority, 
had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon, in 

* Pepys' Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 2. 

R 2 



244 BETTERTON. 

Fletcher's ' Eule a Wife,' &c., which he executed with a determined 
manliness, and honest authority, well worth the best actor's imita- 
tion. He had a piercing eye, and, in characters of heroic life, a quick 
imperious vivacity in his tone of voice, that painted the tyrant truly 
terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone with 
uncommon lustre ; in ' Aurengzebe ' he played Morat, and in ' Don 
Sebastian,' Muley Moloch; in both these parts he had a fierce, lion- 
like majesty in his port and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind 
of trembling admiration." * 

Pepys does not speak much of Betterton, the chief per- 
former at the Portugal-street playhouse. The reason must 
be, either that Betterton played chiefly in tragedy, or that 
his comic talent (which is probable) was not equal to his 
tragic. He was the great actor of his time, as Garrick was 
of the last century, and Mr. Kean lately. His most admired 
character appears to have been that of Hamlet ; though Steele, 
in a paper to his memory in the c TatlerJ seems to have been 
most impressed by his performance of Othello. If an actor's 
Othello is really fine, perhaps it must be his best part, as in 
Mr. Kean's instance, owing to the nature of the character. 
Hamlet speaks to the reflecting part of us; Othello to the 
sensitive. We will not present the reader with extracts from 
Cibber which contain little respecting this actor that might 
not be said of others; only it may be observed, that in the 
better parts of the performances of the old players we have 
something perhaps handed down to us of the manner of these 
ancient ornaments of the stage. The liveliest idea remaining 
of the genius of Betterton is furnished by an anecdote of 
Booth, who, when he first performed the Ghost to Betterton's 
Hamlet, is said to have been so astonished at the other's look 
of surprise, that for some moments he was unable to speak. 
Betterton died old and poor, rather, it should seem, from 
misfortune than imprudence. The actors in those times, 
though much admired, were not rewarded as they have been 
since ; nor received anything like the modern salaries. His 
death is said to have been hastened by tampering with the 
gout, in order to perform on his benefit night. His person 
was rather manly than graceful. He was a good-natured 
man; and, like Moliere, would perform when he was ill, 
rather than hinder the profits of his brother actors.f At 
Caen Wood, Hampstead, the seat of Lord Mansfield, there is 
a portrait of him by Pope, who was an amateur in painting. 
They became acquainted when the latter was young, and the 

* Cibber's Apology, chap, v., &c. f See Tatler, No. 167. 



NOKES. — MRS, BARRY. — MRS. MOUNTFORD. 245 

actor old ; and took such a liking to one another, that Pope is 
supposed to have had a hand in a volume of pieces from 
* Chaucer,' purporting to have been modernised by Bet- 
terton. 

Another celebrated actor in Portugal Street during the 
reign of Charles II. was Nokes, who appears, from Cibber's 
account of him to have been something between Liston and 
Munden. By a line in one of Dry den's Epistles, the town 
seem to have thought a comedy deficient in which he did not 
make his appearance. The poet says to Southern on his play 
of the ' Wives' Excuse ' — 

" The hearers may for want of Nokes repine, 
But rest secure, the readers will be thine." 

Nokes was one of those actors who create a roar the moment 
they are seen, and make people ache with laughter. 

These were among the older performers in Portugal Street. 
When Congreve took a share in the theatre, some others had 
joined it, and become celebrated, two of whom, Mr. Mountford 
"and Mrs. Bracegirdle, we have already described. Another 
two, whose names remain familiar with posterity, are Mrs. 
Mountford and Mrs. Barry. Mrs. Mountford was a capital 
stage coquette ; besides being able to act male coxcombs and 
country dowdies. Mrs. Barry was a fine tragedian, both of 
the heroic and tender cast. Dryden pronounced her the best 
actress he had seen. It is said she was a mistress of Lord 
Eochester's when young ; that it was to her his love-letters 
were addressed ; and that she owed her celebrity to his 
instructions. She was not handsome, and her mouth was a 
little awry, but her countenance was very expressive. This 
is the actress, who, in the delirium of her last moments, is 
said to have alluded in an extempore blank verse to a 
manoeuvre played by Queen Anne's ministry some time 
before : — 

" Ha ! ha ! and so they make us lords by dozens ! " 

Cibber's sketch of Mrs. Mountford, in the character of 
Melantha is the masterpiece of his book, and presents a por- 
trait sufficiently distinct to be extracted. 

" Melantha," says our lively critic (himself a coxcomb of the first 
water), " is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing- 
room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female 
foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a 
fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul and body, are 
in a continual hurry to do something more than is necessary or com- 
mendable. And though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you 



2i6 congreve's plays. 

a just likeness of Mrs. Mountford's action, yet the fantastic impression 
is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, 
though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs that break 
from her are upon a gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a 
letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces, as an 
honourable lover. Here now, one would think, she might naturally 
show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly 
covered. No, sir, not a tittle of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor- 
souled country gentlewoman; she is too much a court lady to be 
under so vulgar a confusion; she reads the letter, therefore, with a 
careless dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, 
as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands, by making 
a complete conquest of him at once ; and that the letter might not 
embarrass her attack, crack ! she scrambles it at once into her palm, 
and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion ; 
down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as if she were 
sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions ; then launches 
into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest 
forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and 
to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, 
that she will not give her lover leave to praise it: silent assenting 
bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conver- 
sation he is admitted to, which, at last, he is relieved from, by her 
engagements to half-a-score visits, which she swims from him to 
make, with a promise to return in a twinkling." * 

Three of Congreve's plays, l Love for Love,' the 'Mourning 
Bride,'' and the ' Way of the Worldf came out at the theatre 
in Portugal Street. In the first paper of the l Tatlerf Steele 
gives a criticism on the performance of c Love for Lovef which 
contains one or two curious points of information respecting 
the customs of play-goers in the reign of Anne. The " article" 
begins like that of a modern newspaper. 

?' On Thursday last was acted, for the benefit of Mr. Betterton, the 
celebrated comedy called ' Love for Love.' Those excellent players, 
Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mr. Dogget, though not at present 
concerned in the house, acted on that occasion. There has not been 
known so great a concourse of persons of distinction as at that time : 
the stage itself was covered with gentlemen and ladies; and when the 
curtain was drawn, it discovered even there a very splendid audience. 
This unusual encouragement, which was given to a play for the 
advantage of so great an actor, gives an undeniable instance that the 
true relish for manly entertainments and rational pleasures is not 
wholly lost. All the parts were acted to perfection : the actors were 
careful of their carriage, and no one was guilty of the affectation to 
insert witticism of his own; but a due respect was had to the audience 
for encouraging this accomplished player. It is not now doubted but 
plays will revive, and take their usual course in the opinion of persons 
of wit and merit, notwithstanding their late apostacy in favour of 
dress and sound. The place is very much altered since Mr. Dryden 

* Cibber's Apology, 2d edit. p. 138, 



RICH. — CAREY STREET. — MRS. CHAPONE. 247 

frequented it; where you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires, in 
the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; 
and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance 
of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the 
truth of the game." 

The last proprietor of this theatre was Rich, the famous 
harlequin, who, having, a poor company, unable to compete 
with Drury Lane, introduced that love of show and spectacle 
which has ever since been willing to forego the regular 
drama, however reproached by the critics. Pope has hitched 
him into the i Dunciad,' (book iii.), as one of the ministers of 
Dulness. 

'• Immortal Rich ! how calm he sits at ease, 
'Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease; 
And proud his mistress' order to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." 

He had the merit, however, of producing the 'Beggar's 
Opera,' which was acted scores of nights together all over 
England, and finally rendered its heroine a duchess, and is 
said to have made " Gay Rich, and Rich Gay." Rich had 
no education. He was in the habit, when conversing, of 
saying mister, instead of sir. 

One of Rich's actors was Quin, of whom more by and by. 
Garrick was never at this theatre. It closed a little before 
his time, and was never reopened. The vulgar attributed its 
desertion to a supernumerary devil, who made his appearance 
in the pantomine of ' Harlequin and Dr. FaustusJ and took 
his exit through the roof instead of the door; which so 
frightened the manager that he had not the courage to open 
the theatre again. The only memorial now remaining in 
Portugal Street of theatres and play-goers, and all their lively 
generation, is a table set up in the burial-ground to the 
memory of the famous Joe Miller, author of so many posthu- 
mous good things. He was an actor in Congreve's time, and 
has the reputation of having been an honest, as well as a 
pleasant fellow. The jest-book, which passes for his publi- 
cation, was collected by a companion of his, who is thought to 
have owed to him nothing but his name. It is but reasonable 
to conclude, however, that many of the jests were of the 
comedian's relating. 

In Carey Street, when she was first married, lived Mrs. 
Chapone. She afterwards resided in Arundel Street. When 
we have no greater names to mention, we think it our duty 
to avail ourselves of those of any intelligent and amiable 



248 HISTORY AND SPECIMENS 

persons who are really worth mention, though they may not 
be of the first order. They will be welcome to the inhabitants 
of the street, and perhaps serve to throw a grace over neigh- 
bourhoods that want it. It is better to think of Mrs. Chapone 
in going along Carey Street, than of bailiffs and lock-up 
houses — unless, indeed the latter should make us zealous to 
reform the debtor and creditor laws ; and even then we might 
be glad of the refreshment. Mrs. Chapone was one of the 
disciples of Richardson, and is well known for her ' Letters on 
the Improvement of the Mind.'' Ten months after her marriage 
she lost her husband, to whom she was greatly attached, and 
then she left Carey Street ; so that the pleasantest part of her 
life was probably spent there. 

Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement's 
Inn Fields, the property of the Earls of Clare, one of whom 
built the market about the year 1657. He is said to have 
lived close by, in a style of magnificence. The names of the 
family, Denzel, Holies, &c, are retained in some of the 
neighbouring streets. 

Clare Market became notorious in the time of Pope, for 
the extravagance of Orator Henley, a clever, but irregular- 
minded man, who overrated himself, and became, it may be 
said, mad with impudence. Some describe his Oratory as 
being in the Market, others in Duke Street, which is the 
street going out of the western side of Lincoln's Inn Square 
through the archway. Another writer says it was the old 
theatre of Sir William Davenant, in Gibbon's Tennis Court, 
of which we have just spoken, and which is said to have 
been in Vere Street. Most likely all these accounts are to be 
reconciled. A tenement is often described as existing in a 
certain street, when the street presents nothing but a passage 
to it ; and we take Henley's Oratory to have been the old 
theatre, with a passage to it from the market, from Vere 
Street, and from Duke Street. Having settled this magni- 
ficent point, we proceed with the no less magnificent orator. 

He was a native of Melton Mowbray, in the county of 
Leicester, the son of a clergyman, and after going to St. 
John's College, Cambridge, returned to his native place, and 
became master of the school there. 

" reefing, or fancying," says the author of the ' Lounger's Common- 
place Book/ "that a genius like his ought not to be buried in so 
obscure a situation, having been long convinced that many gross 
errors and impostures prevailed in the various institutions and esta- 
blishments of mankind ; being also ambitious of restoring ancient 



OF ORATOR HENLEY. 24.9 

eloquence, but as his enemies asserted, to avoid the scandalous 
embarrassments of illicit love, he repaired to the metropolis, and for 
a short time performed clerical functions at St. John's Chapel, near 
Bedford Kow, with the prospect of succeeding to the lectureship of 
an adjoining parish (Bloomsbury), which soon became vacant. 

"Several candidates offering for this situation, a warm contest 
ensued; probation sermons were preached; and Henley's predomi- 
nating vanity made him expect an easy victory. 

" We may guess at his disappointment, when this disciple of 
Demosthenes and Cicero was informed that the congregation had no 
objection to his language or his doctrine, but that he threw himself 
about too much in the pulpit, and that another person was chosen. 

"Losing his temper as well as his election, he rushed into a room 
where the principal parishioners were assembled, and thus addressed 
them, in all the vehemence of outrageous passion : — 

" ' Blockheads ! are you qualified to judge of the degree of action 
necessary for a preacher of God's word ? Were you able to read, or 
had you sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the 
renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you, almost the only 
requisite of a public speaker was action, action, action. 

" ' But I despise and defy you ; provoco ad populum ; the public 
shall decide between us/ He then hastily retired, and, to vindicate 
his injured fame, published the probationary discourse he had 
delivered. 

" Thus disappointed in the regular routine of his profession, he 
became a quack divine ; for this character he was eminently qualified, 
possessing a strong voice, fluent language, an imposing magisterial 
air, and a countenance, which no violation of propriety, reproach, or 
self-correction, was ever known to embarrass or discompose. 

"He immediately advertised that he should hold forth publicly, 
two days in the week, and hired for this purpose, a large room in or 
near Newport Market, which he called the Oratory ; but previous to 
the commencement of his ' academical discourses,' he chose to consult 
Mr. Whiston, a learned clergyman of considerable mathematical and 
astronomical research, but who had rendered himself remarkable by 
eccentric simplicity of heart, and the whimsical heterodoxy of his 
creed. 

" In a letter to this gentleman he desired to be informed, whether 
he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from 
the Church of England. Mr. Whiston did not encourage Henley's 
project, and a correspondence took place, which, ending in virulence 
and ill-language, produced, a few years after, the following letter : — 

" < To Mr. William Whiston, 
1 Take notice, that I give you warning not to enter my room in 
Newport Market, at your peril. * John Henley.' "* 

Henley succeeded in his speculation, by lecturing, in the 
most important manner, on all sorts of subjects, from the 
origin of evil down to a shoe. He also published a variety 
of pamphlets, and a periodical farrago called the ' Hyp 
Doctor,' for which he is said to have had pay from Sir 
* «» Lounger's Common Place Book," vol. ii., p. 137. 



250 HISTORY AND SPECIMENS 

Robert Walpole ; and as his popularity rapidly increased in 
consequence of his addressing himself to uneducated under- 
standings, he removed from his Oratory in Newport Market 
to the more capacious room in Clare Market ; for he seems to 
have had a natural propensity to the society of butchers, 
and they were fond of his trenchant style. He sometimes 
threatened his enemies with them. Pope, in answering the 
assertions of those who charged him with depriving people of 
their bread, asks whether Colley Cibber had not " still his 
lord," and Henley his butchers. 

" And has not Colley still his lord 

His butchers Henley, his freemasons Moore." 

Pope had been attacked by him. The poet speaks of him 
again, several times, in the ' Dunciad :' 

" Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo ! Henley stands, 
Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands. 
How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue ! 
How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung ! 
Still break the benches, Henley ! with thy strain, 
While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain. 
O great restorer of the good old stage, 
Preacher at once and zany of the age ! 
O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes, 
A decent priest where monkeys were the gods." 

Book iii., v. 199. 

Pope says he had a " gilt tub," and insinuates that he 
sometimes got drunk. Among the sleeping worthies in the 
* Dunciad,' 

" Henley lay inspired beside a sink, 

And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink." 

A contemporary journalist, who says that the fame of 
Henley induced him to be present at one of the lectures in 
Newport Market, describes him as entering like a harlequin 
by a door behind the pulpit, and " at one large leap jumping 
into it, and falling to work." " His notions," he says, " the 
orator beat into the audience with hands, arms, legs, and 
head, as if people's understandings were to be courted and 
knocked down with blows." The price of admission was a 
shilling. The following are samples of Henley's extraordinary 
advertisements : — 

" At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour 
after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch ol Endor. At half-an-hour 
after five, the theological lecture will be on the conversion and 
original of the Scottish nation, and of the Picts and Caledonians ; 
St. Andrew's relics and panegyric, and the character and mission of 
the Apostles, 



OF ORATOR HENLEY. 251 

" On Wednesday, at six, or near the matter, take your chance, will 
be a medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion, 
and of confounders, in the road and out of the way. 

" On Friday, will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus, and 
conjuration ; after each, the Chimes of the Times, No. 23 and 24. 
N.B. Whenever the prices of the seats are occasionally raised in the 
week days, notice will be given of it in the prints. An account of 
the performances of the Oratory from the 1st of August is published, 
with the Discourse on Nonsense ; and if any bishop, clergyman, or 
other subject of his Majesty, or the subject of any foreign prince or 
state, can at my years, and in my circumstances and opportunities, 
'without the least assistance or any patron in the world, parallel the 
study, choice, variety, and discharge of the said performances of the 
Oratory by his own or any others, I will engage forthwith to quit the 
said Oratory. 

"J.Henley."* 

In the bill of fare issued for Sunday, September 28, 1729, 
the most extraordinary theological speculations are followed 
by a list of the fashions in dress. 

"At the Oratory, the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, near Clare 
Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten : 1. The postil will be 
on the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. 2. The sermon will 
be on the necessary power and attractive force which religion gives 
the spirit of a man with God and good spirits. 

"II. At five : 1. The postil will be on this point: in what language 
our Saviour will speak the last sentence on mankind. 2. The 
lecture will be on Jesus Christ's sitting at the right hand of God ; 
where that is ; the honours and lustre of his inauguration ; the 
learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article. 

" The Monday's orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday, 
the oration will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of 
family pictures in all ages ; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold ; shoes, wedding- 
shoes, two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pan- 
taloons, garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, 
tuckers, farthingales, corkins, minikins, slammakins, ruffles, round 
robins, toilets, fans, patches ; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the 
wit and beauty of my grannum ; Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared 
with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy ; fine ladies, and pretty gentle- 
women ; being a general view of the beau monde, from before Noah's 
flood to the year 29. On Friday will be something better than last 
Tuesday. After each, a bob at the times." f 

Henley must have lectured a long while ; for one of his 
" bobs at the times" was occasioned by the dismissal of 
Dr. Cobden, a chaplain to George II. in the year 1748, for 
preaching from the following text : " Take away the wicked 
from before the king, and his throne shall be established in 
righteousness." The wicked, we believe, meant the king's 

* Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London 
during the Eighteenth Century, vol. i„ p. 417, 
f Malcolm, et seq., p. 421. 



252 ORATOR HENLEY. 

mistresses. Next Saturday, Henley's advertisement appeared 
with an epigram on this text for a motto :— 

" Away with the wicked before the king, 
And away with the wicked behind him ; 

His throne it will bless 

With righteousness, 
And we shall know where to find him." 

This must be what the reviewers call a " favourable 
specimen." 

"Sometimes," says the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "one of 
his old Bloomsbury friends caught the speaker's eye ; on these 
occasions, he could not resist the temptation to gratify his vanity and 
resentment ; after a short pause he would address the unfortunate 
interloper in words to the following effect : ' You see, sir, all mankind 
are not exactly of your opinion ; there are, you perceive, a few 
sensible people in the world, who consider me as not wholly unqualified 
for the office I have undertaken.' 

" His abashed and confounded adversaries, thus attacked in a public 
company, a most awkward species of distress, were glad to retire 
precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley's 
partizans." * 

It is probable that Henley's partizans were sometimes 
necessary to secure him from the results of his imprudence, 
though his boldness appears to have been on a par with it. 
He once attracted an audience of shoemakers by announcing 
that he could teach them a method of making shoes with 
wonderful celerity. The secret consisted in cutting off the 
tops of old boots. His motto to the advertisement (omne 
majus continet in se minus, the greater includes the less) had a 
pleasantry in it, which makes the disappointment of the poor 
shoemakers doubly ludicrous. 

Henley, on one occasion, was for several days in the 
custody of the King's messenger, having incurred the dis- 
pleasure of the House of Lords. " Lord Chesterfield, at that 
time secretary of state," says the c Lounger,' " amused himself 
and his associates in office by sporting with the hopes and 
fears of our restorer of ancient eloquence ; during his exami- 
nation before the privy council, he requested permission to 
sit, on account of a real, or, as it was supposed, pretended 
rheumatism. Occasioning considerable merriment by his 
eccentric answers, and sometimes by the oddity of his ques- 
tions, he was observed to join heartily and loudly in the 
laugh he had himself created. 

* Lounger's Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 139. 



DUKE STREET AND LITTLE WILD STREET. 253 

" The Earl having expostulated with him on the impropriety of 
ridiculing the exertions of his native country, at the moment rebellion 
raged in the heart of the kingdom, Henley replied, ' I thought there 
was no harm, my Lord, in cracking a joke on a red-herring :' alluding 
to the worthy primate of that name, who proposed, and, I believe, 
had actually commenced, arming and arraying the clergy. 

" Many disrespectful and unwarrantable expressions he had applied 
to persons high in office, being mentioned to him, he answered, with- 
out embarrassment, ' My Lords, I must live.' 

" * I see no kind of reason for that,' said Lord Chesterfield, ' but 
many against it.' The council were pleased, and laughed at the 
retort ; the prisoner, somewhat irritated, observed, ' That is a good 
thing, but it has been said before.' 

" A few days after, being reprimanded for his improper conduct, 
and cautioned against repeating it, he was dismissed, as an impudent, 
but entertaining fellow."* 

To complete the history of this man, he struck medals for 
his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian ; over it the 
motto, Ad summa (to the height), and below, Inveniam viam 
aut faciam (I will find a way or make one). As might be 
expected, he found no way at last, but that of falling into 
contempt. He appears to have been too imprudent to make 
money by his vagaries ; and his manners, probably in 
consequence, became gross and ferocious. He died in 1756. 
His person makes a principal figure in two humorous plates, 
attributed to Hogarth. 

Duke Street and Little Wild Street have had an inhabitant, 
as illustrious afterwards as he was then obscure, in the person 
of Benjamin Franklin, who, when he was first in England, 
worked in the printing office of Mr. Watts, in the latter street, 
and lodged in the former. When he came to England after- 
wards, as the agent of Massachusetts, he went into this office, 
" and going up," says his biography, "to a particular press 
[now in America], thus addressed the two workmen : l Come, 
my friends, we will drink together : it is now forty years 
since I worked like you at this press, as a journeyman 
printer.'" The same publication gives an account of him 
during this period, which, besides containing more than one 
curious local particular, is highly worth the attention of 
those who confound stimulus with vigour. 

"After the completion," says the writer, "of twelve months at 
Palmer's" (in Bartholomew Close), "Franklin removed to the 
printing-office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he 
continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the British 
metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow lady in 

* Lounger's Common-Place Book, vol. ii., p. 141. 



254 ANECDOTES OF FRANKLIH. 

Duke Street, opposite the Catholic chapel, for which he paid at his 
old rate of three and sixpence weekly, and received no new impres- 
sions in favour of Christians from his occasional notices of the Romish 
superstitions in this family and neighbourhood. His landlady was a 
clergyman's daughter, who, marrying a Catholic, had abjured Pro- 
testantism, and became acquainted with several distinguished families 
of that persuasion. She and Franklin found mutual pleasure in each 
other's society. He kept good hours, and she was too lame generally to 
leave her room; frugality was the habit of both; half an anchovy, a 
small slice of bread and butter each, with half a pint of ale between 
them, furnished commonly their supper. So well pleased was the widow 
with her inmate, that when Franklin talked of removing to another 
house, where he could obtain the same accommodation as with her 
for two shillings per week, she became generous in his favour, and 
abated her charge for his room to that sum. He never paid her more 
during the rest of his stay with her, which was the whole time he 
continued in London. In the attic, was a maiden Catholic lady, by 
choice and habit a nun. She had been sent early in life to the Con- 
tinent to take the veil; but the climate disagreeing with her health, 
she returned home; devoted her small estate to charitable purposes, 
with the exception of about I2l. a-year; practised confession daily; 
and lived entirely on water-gruel. Her presence was thought a 
blessing to the house, and several of its tenants in succession had 
charged her no rent. Her room contained a mattress, table, crucifix, 
and stool, as its only furniture. She admitted the occasional visits 
of Franklin and her landlady ; was cheerful, he says, and healthful : 
and while her superstition moved his compassion, he felt confirmed 
in his frugality by her example, and exhibits it in his journal as 
another proof of the possibiblity of supporting life, health, and cheer- 
fulness on very small means. 

" During the first weeks of his engagement with Mr. "Watts, he 
worked as a pressman, drinking only water, while his companions had 
their five pints of porter each, per day; and his strength was superior 
to theirs. He ridiculed the verbal iogic of strong beer being neces- 
sary for strong work; contending that the strength yielded by malt 
liquor could only be in proportion to the quantity of flour or actual 
grain dissolved in the liquor, and that a pennyworth of bread must 
have more of this than a pot of porter. The Water- American, as he 
was called, had some converts to his system; his example, in this 
case, being clearly better than his philosophy.* 

* "For," says the note, "while the mucilaginous qualities of porter 
may form one criterion of the nourishment it yields, it does not follow 
that mere nourishment is or ought to be the only consideration in a 
labouring man's use of malt liquor, or any other aliment. It is well 
known that flesh-meats yield chyle in greater abundance than any 
production of the vegetable kingdom; but Franklin would not have 
considered this any argument for living wholly upon meat. The fact 
is, that the stimulating quality of all fermented liquors (when moder- 
ately taken) is an essential part of the refreshment, and therefore of 
the strength they yield. 

* We curse not wine — the vile excess we blame.' " 
[To this Franklin might have answered, that the want of stimulus is 



ANECDOTES OF FRANKLIN. 255 

"Franklin was born to be a revolutionist, in many good senses of 
the word. He now proposed and carried several alterations in the 
so-called chapel-\a,vrs of the printing office ; resisted what he thought 
the impositions, while he conciliated the respect of his fellow- workmen; 
and always had cash and credit in the neighbourhood at command, to 
which the sottish part of his brethren were occasionally, and sometimes 
largely indebted. He thus depicts this part of his prosperous life: — 
' On my entrance, I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I 
had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in 
America, where the printers work alternately, as compositors and at 
the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the 
number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occa- 
sionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, 
while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised 
to see by this and many other examples, that the American aquatic, 
as they used to call me, was stronger than those that drank porter. 
The beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in 
serving that house alone. My fellow-pressman drank every day a 
pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for break- 
fast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about 
six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his 
day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had 
need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work. 

" '1 endeavoured to convince him, that the bodily strength furnished 
by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley 
dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there 
was a larger portion of flour in a penny -loaf, and that, consequently, 
if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water, he would derive more 
strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning, however, 
did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, 
and paying every Saturday night a score of four or five shillings 
a-week for this cursed beverage ; an expense from which I was 
wholly exempt. Thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in 
a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty. 

" ' My example prevailed with several of them to renounce their 
abominable practice of bread and cheese with beer; and they pro- 
cured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good basin of warm 
gruel, in which was a small slice of butter, with toasted bread and 
nutmeg. This was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more 
than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time 

generally produced by a previous abuse of it, and that the having 
recourse to fermented liquors is likely to continue the abuse, whatever 
may be said about moderation. The moderation is so difficult, that 
it is better to abstain than to hazard it. It is true (not to quote the 
words irreverently) "man does not live by bread alone," but by 
sociality and good-humour; and that even a little excess occasionally 
is not to be narrowly considered; but for the purposes of labour we 
may surely gather from the recorded experience of those who have 
laboured most, whether physically or mentally, first, that the more 
temperate our habits, the more we can perform; and, secondly, that 
an habitual abstinence from some kinds of refreshment is the only 
way to secure thein.} 



256 



ANECDOTES OP FHANEXlN. 



preserved the head clearer. Those who continued to gorge them- 
selves with beer, often lost their credit with the publican, from 
neglecting to pay their score. They had then recourse to me to 
become security for them, their light, as they used to call it, being out. 
I attended at the table every Saturday evening to take up the little 
sums which I had made myself answerable for, and which sometimes 
amounted to near thirty shillings a- week. 

'• * This circumstance, added to the reputation of my being a 
tolerable good gabber, or, in other words, skilful in the art of bur- 
lesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had, besides, recom- 
mended myself to the esteem of my master by nvy assiduous application 
to business, never observing Saint Monday. My extraordinary 
quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most 
urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed 
away in a very pleasant manner.' " * 

* Life of Benjamin Franklin, 1826, p. 31. 




WHS PRINTING PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORXBTfc 



DRURY LANE. 



"a 



CHAPTER VII. 

DRURY LANE, AND THE TWO THEATRES IN DRURY 
LANE AND COVENT GARDEN. 

•raven House — Donne and his vision — Lord Craven and the Queen 
of Bohemia — Nell Gwynn — Drury Lane Theatre — Its antiquity, 
different eras, and rebuildings — The principal theatre of Dryden, 
Wycherley, Farquhar, Steele, Garrick, and Sheridan — Old Drury 
in the time of Charles II. — A visit to it — Pepys and his theatrical 
gossip, with notes — Hart and Mohun — Goodman — Nell Gwynn — 
Dramatic taste of that age — Booth — Artificial tragedy — Wilks and 
Cibber — Bullock and Penkethman — A Colonel enamoured of 
Cibber's wig — Mrs. Oldfield — Her singular position in society — Not 
the Flavia of the Tatler — Pope's account of her last words pro- 
bably not true — Declamatory acting — Lively account of Garrick 
and Quin by Mr. Cumberland — Improvement of stage costume — 
King — Mrs. Pritchard — Mrs. Ciive — Mrs. Woffington — Covent 
Garden — Barry — Contradictory characters of him by Davies and 
Churchill — Macklin — Woodward — Pantomime — English taste in 
music — Cooke — Rise of actors and actresses in social rank — Im- 
provement of the audience — Dr. Johnston at the theatre — Churchill 
a great pit critic — His Rosciad — His picture of Mossop — Mrs. 
Jordan and Mr. Suett — Early recollections of a play-goer. 

RURY LANE takes its name from "the 
habitation of the great family of the 
Druries," built, " I believe," says Pen- 
nant, " by Sir William Drury, knight of 
the garter, a most able commander in 
the Irish wars, who unfortunately fell 
in a duel with Sir John Burroughs, in a 
foolish quarrel about precedency. Sir 
Robert, his son, was a great patron of Dr. Donne, and 
assigned to him apartments in his house. I cannot learn 
into whose hands it passed afterwards. During the time of 
the fatal discontents of the favourite, Essex, it was the place 
where his imprudent advisers resolved on such counsels as 
terminated in the destruction of him and his adherents." * 

Drury House stood at the corner of Drury Lane and Wych 
Street, upon the ground now included in Craven Buildings 
in the one thoroughfare, and the Olympic Pavilion in the 
other. 

Pennant proceeds to say, that it was occupied in the next 
century by " the heroic William Lord Craven, afterwards 

* P. 160, 




258 CRAVEN HOUSE. 

Earl Craven," who rebuilt it in the form standing in his 
time. He describes it as "a large brick pile," — a public- 



CRAVEN HOUSE. 

house with the sign of the Queen of Bohemia, — a head which 
still mystifies people in some parts of the country. The 
remains were taken down in 1809, and the Olympic Pavilion 
built on part of the site. But the public-house was only a 
portion of it. 

Who would suppose, in going by the place now, that it was 
once the habitation of wit and elegance, of a lord and a queen, 
and of more than one "romance of real life?" Yet the 
passenger acquainted with the facts can never fail to be 
impressed by them, especially by the romantic history of 
Donne. This master of profound fancies (whom Dryden pro- 
nounced " the greatest wit, though not the best poet," of our 
nation) had in his youth led a gay imprudent life, which left 
him poor. He became secretary to Lord Chancellor Elles- 
mere, and fell in love with his lordship's niece, then residing 
in the house, daughter to a Sir George Moor or More, who, 
though Donne was of an ancient family, was very angry, and 
took the young lady away into the country. The step, how- 
ever, was too late ; for, the passion being mutual, a private 
marriage had taken place. The upshot was, that Sir George 
would have nothing to say to the young couple, and that they 
fell into great distress. After a time, Sir Robert Drury, a 
man of large fortune, who possessed the mansion above 
described, invited Donne and his wife to live with him, and 
this too in a spirit that enabled all parties to be the better for 



DONNE AND HIS VISION. 259 

it. But for thi,s, and the curious story connected with it, we 
shall have recourse to the pages of our angling friend Walton, 
who was a good fellow enough when he was not " handling 
a worm as if he loved him." 

" Sir Kobert Drury," says Walton, " a gentleman of a very noble 
estate, and a more liberal mind, assigned him and his wife an useful 
apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and not only rent 
free, but was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as 
sympathised with him and his, m all their joy and sorrows. 

"At this time of Mr. Donne's and his wife's living in Sir Robert's 
house, the Lord Hay was, by King James, sent upon a glorious em- 
bassy to the then French King, Henry IV., and Sir Robert put on a 
sudden resolution to accompany him to the French Court, and to be 
present at his audience there. And Sir Robert put on a sudden reso- 
lution to solicit Mr. Donne to be his companion in that journey. 
And this desire was suddenly made known to his wife, who was then 
with child, and otherwise under so dangerous a habit of body as to 
her health, that she professed an unwillingness to allow him any 
absence from her; saying, ' her divining soul boded her some ill in his 
absence,' and, therefore, desired him not to leave her. This made 
Mr. Donne lay aside all thoughts of his journey, and really to resolve 
against it. But Sir Robert became restless in his persuasions for it, 
and Mr. Donne was so generous as to think he had sold his liberty 
when he received so many charitable kindnesses from him, and told 
his wife so; who did, therefore, with an unwilling-willingness, give 
a faint consent to the journey, which was proposed to be but for two 
months ; for about that time they determined their return. Within 
a few days after this resolve, the ambassador, Sir Robert, and Mr. 
Donne, left London ; and were the twelfth day got all safe to Paris. 
Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that 
room, in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined 
together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; 
and as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone; but in such an ecstacy 
and so altered in his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him; 
insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had 
befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. Donne 
was not able to make a present answer; but, after a long and per- 
plexed pause, did at last say, ' I have seen a dreadful vision since I 
saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me in this room, 
with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her 
arms : this I have seen since I saw you.' To which Sir Robert 
replied, ' Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you; and this is the 
result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for 
you are now awake.' To which Mr. Donne's reply was, ' I cannot 
be surer that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you ; 
and am as sure, that at her second appearing she stopped and looked 
me in the face, and vanished.' Rest and sleep had not altered Mr. 
Donne's opinion the next day; for he then affirmed this vision with 
a more deliberate, and so confirmed a confidence, that he inclined Sir 
Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true. It is truly said, 
that desire and doubt have no rest ; and it proved so with Sir Robert; 
tor he immediately sent a servant to Drewry House, with a charge to 

s 2 



L v JO DONNE AND HIS VISION. 

hasten back, and bring him word, whether Mrs. Donne were alive; 
and, if alive, in what condition she was in as to her health. The 
twelfth day the messenger returned with this account : — That he 
found and left Mrs. Donne very sad, and sick in her bed; and that, 
after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered of a dead 
child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved to be the same 
day, and about the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her 
pass by him in his chamber. 

"This is a relation," continues "Walton, "that will beget some 
wonder, and it well may ; for most of our world are at present 
possessed with a»> opinion, that visions and miracles are ceased. And, 
though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and tuned 
to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other that is not 
touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance will — like an echo 
to a trumpet — warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same 
tune; yet many will not believe that there is any such thing as the 
sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy 
his own opinion. But if the unbelieving will not allow the believing 
reader of this story a liberty to believe that it may be true, then I 
wish him to consider, that many wise men have believed that the ghost 
of Julius Caesar did appear to Brutus, and that both St. Austin, and 
Monica his mother, had visions in order to his conversion. And 
though these, and many others — too many to name — have but the 
authority of human story, yet the incredible reader may find in the 
sacred story, that Samuel, &c." * 

We may here break off with the observation of Mr. Chal- 
mers, that " the whole may be safely left to the judgment of 
the reader."")* Walton says he had not this story from Donne 
himself, but from a " Person of Honour," who " knew more 
of the secrets of his heart than any person then living," 
and who related it " with such circumstance and asseve- 
ration," that not to say anything of bis hearer's belief, 
Walton did " verily believe," that the gentleman " himself 
believed it." 

The biographer then presents us with some verses which 
" were given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the time he then 
parted from her," and which he " begs leave to tell us " that 
he has heard some critics, learned both in languages and 
poetry, say, that " none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever 
equal." 

These lines are full of the wit that Dryden speaks of, hor- 
ribly misused to osbcure the most beautiful feelings. Some 
of them are among the passages quoted in Dr. Johnson to 
illustrate the faults of the metaphysical school. Mr. Chal- 
mers and others have thought it probable, that it was upon 

* Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Hooker, kc. oy 
Izaac Walton, 1825, p. 22. 

| Life of Donne, in Chalmers's " British Boets," 



DONNE AND HIS VISION. 261 

this occasion Donne wrote a set of verses, which he addressed 
to his wife, on her proposing to accompany him abroad as a 
page ; but as the writer speaks of going to Italy, which 
appears to have been out of the question in this two months' 
visit to Paris, they most probably belong to some other jour- 
ney or intended journey, the period of which is unknown. 
The numbers of these verses are sometimes rugged, but they 
are full of as much nature and. real feeling, as sincerity 
ever put into a true passion. There is an awfulness in the 
commencing adjuration : — 

" By our first strange and fatal interview, 
By all desires which thereof did ensue; 
By our long striving hopes; by that remorse 
Which my words' masculine persuasive force 
Begot in thee, and by the memory 
Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me, 
I calmly beg : but by thy father's wrath, 
By all pains which want and divorcement hath, 
I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I 
And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy, 
I here unswear, and overs wear them thus: 
Thou shalt not love by means so dangerous. 
Temper, O fair Love! love's impetuous rage; 
Be my true mistress, not my feigned page. 
I'll go; and by thy kind leave, leave behind 
Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind 
Thirst to come back. ! if thou die before, 
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar: 
Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move 
Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, 
Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness : thou hast read 
How roughly he in pieces shivered 
Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved. 
Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have proved 
Dangers unurged : feed on this flattery, 
That absent lovers one in the other be; 
Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change 
Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange 
To thyself only: all will spy in thy face 
A blushing womanly discovering grace. 
* * * * • 

When I am gone dream me some happiness, 
Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; 
Nor praise nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse 
Openly love's force; nor in bed fright thy nurse 
With midnight's startings, crying out, Oh! oh! 
Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go 
O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I, 
Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, fall, and die. 
Augur me better chance; except dread Jove 
Think it enough for me to have had thy love." 



262 LOED CRAVEN AND 

Drury House, when rebuilt by Lord Craven, took the 
Dame of Craven House. To this abode, at the restoration of 
Charles II., his lordship brought his royal mistress, the 
Queen of Bohemia, to whose interest he had devoted his 
fortunes, and to whom he is supposed to have been secretly 
wedded. She was daughter to James L, and, with the 
reluctant consent of her parents (particularly of her mother, 
who used to twit her with the title of Goody Palsgrave), was 
married to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, for whom the 
Protestant interest in Germany erected Bohemia into a 
kingdom, in the vain hope, with the assistance of his father- 
in-law, of competing with the Catholic Emperor. Frederic 
lost everything, and his widow became a dependent on the 
bounty of this Lord Craven, a nobleman of wealthy com- 
mercial stock, who had fought in her husband's cause, and 
helped to bring up her children. It is through her that the 
family of Brunswick succeeded to the throne of this kingdom, 
as the next Protestant heirs of James I. James's daughter, 
being a woman of lively manners, a queen, and a Protestant 
leader, excited great interest in her time, and received more 
than the usual portion of flattery from the romantic. Donne 
wrote an epithalamium on her marriage, in which are those 
preposterous lines beginning — 

"Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there." 

Sir Henry Wotton had permission to call her his " royal 
mistress," which he was as proud of as if he had been a 
knight of old. And when she lost her Bohemian kingdom, 
it was said that she retained a better one, for that she was 
still the " Queen of Hearts." Sir Henry wrote upon her his 
elegant verses beginning — 

" You meaner beauties of the night," 

in which he gives a new turn to the commonplaces of stars 
and roses, and calls her 

" Th' eclipse and glory of her kind." 
It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether she was ever handsome. 
None of the Stuarts appear to have been so, with the 
exception of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, who resembled, 
perhaps, her mother. Pepys, who saw the Queen of 
Bohemia at the Eestoration, " thought her a very debonaire, 
but plain lady." This, it is true, was near her death; but 
Pepys was given to admire, and royalty did not diminish the 
inclination. Had her charms ever been as great as reported, 



THE QUEEN OP BOHEMIA. 263 

he would have discovered the remains of them. It has been 
beautifully said by Drayton, that 

"Even in the aged'st face, where beauty once did dwell, 
And nature, in the least, but seemed to excel, 
Time cannot make such waste, but something will appear 
To show some little tract of delicacy there." 

Pepys saw the queen afterwards two or three times at the 
play, and does not record any alteration of his opinion. Her 
Majesty did not survive the Restoration many months. She 
quitted Craven House for Leicester House (afterwards Norfolk 
House, in the Strand,) seemingly for no other purpose than 
to die there; which she did in February 1661-2. Whether 
Lord Craven attended her at this period does not appear ; but 
she left him her books, pictures, and papers. Sometimes he 
accompanied her to the play. She and her husband, King 
Frederick, appear to have been lively, good-humoured persons, 
a little vain of the royalty which proved such a misfortune to 
them. The queen had the better sense, though it seems to 
have been almost as much over-rated as her beauty. But all 
the Stuarts were more or less clever, with the exception 
of James II. 

The author of a History and Antiquities of the Deanery of 
Craven in Yorkshire, gives it as a tradition, that Lord Craven's 
father, a lord-mayor, was born of such poor parents that they 
sent him when a boy by a common carrier to London, where 
he became a mercer or draper. His son was a distinguished 
officer under Gustavus Adolphus, was ennobled, attached 
himself to the King and Queen of Bohemia, and is supposed, 
as we have seen, to have married the king's widow. He was 
her junior by twelve years. He long resided in Craven 
House, became Colonel of the Coldstream Regiment of Foot 
Guards, and was famed for his bustling activity. He so con- 
stantly made his appearance at a fire, that his horse is said to 
have " smelt one as soon as it happened." Pepys, during a 
riot against houses of ill-fame (probably the houses in Whet- 
stone Park, as well as in Moornelds, for he talks of going to 
Lincoln's Inn Fields to see the 'prentices,) describes his lord- 
ship as riding up and down the fields, " like a madman," 
giving orders to the soldiery. It was probably in allusion to 
this military vivacity that Lord Dorset says, in his ballad on 
a mistress, — 

" The people's hearts leap, wherever she comes, 
And beat day and night, like my Lord Craven's drums." 



264 NELL GWYNN. 

When there was a talk in his old age of giving his regiment 
to somebody else, Craven said, that " if they took away his 
regiment they had as good take away his life, since he had 
nothing else to divert himself with." The next king, how- 
ever, William III., gave it to General Talmash; yet the old 
lord is said to have gone on, busy to the last. He died in 
1697, aged nearly 89 years. He was intimate with Evelyn, 
Eay, and other naturalists, and delighted in gardening. The 
garden of Craven House ran in the direction of the present 
Drury Lane; so that where there is now a bustle of a very 
different sort, we may fancy the old soldier busying himself 
with his flower-beds, and Mr. Evelyn discoursing upon the 
blessings of peace and privacy."* 

The only other personage of celebrity whom we know of as 
living in Drury Lane, is one of another sort; to wit, Nell 
Gwynn. The ubiquitous Pepys speaks of his seeing her there 
on a May-morning. 

" May 1st, 1667. To Westminster, in the way meeting many milk- 
maids with garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before 
them; and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door in Drury 
Lane in her smock sleeves and boddice, looking upon one. She seemed 
a mighty pretty creature." 

Lodgings in this quarter, though Nell lived there, must 
have been of more decent reputation than they became after- 
wards. It is curious that the old English word Drury, or 
Druerie, should be applicable to the fame we allude to. It has 
more or less deserved it for a long period, though we believe 
the purlieus rather warrant it now, than the lane itself. Pope 
and Gay speak of it. Pope describes the lane also as a place 
of residence for poor authors: — 

" ' Keep your piece nine years.' 
1 Nine years! ' cries he, who high in Drury Lane, 
LulPd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, 
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, 
Obliged by hunger and request of friends." 

The existence of a theatre in Drury Lane is as old as the 
time of Shakspeare. It was then called the Phoenix; was 
"a private," or more select house, like that of Blackfriars; 
and had been a cock -pit, by which name it was also desig- 

* For complete particulars of the history of James's daughter and 
son-in-law, and their gallant adherents, see " Memoirs of Elizabeth 
Stuart, Queen of Bohemia," by Miss Benger, and " Collins's Peerage," 
by Sir Egerton Brydges, vol. v., p. 446. Miss Benger is as romantic 
as if she had lived in the queen's time, but she is diligent and amusing. 
The facts can easily be separated from her colouring. 



DfcURY LANE THEATRE. 265 

nated. Phoenix generally implies that a place has been 
destroyed by fire, a common fate with theatres ; but the first 
occasion on which we hear of the present one is the destruc- 
tion of it by a Puritan mob. This took place in the year 
-1617, in the time of James; and was doubtless caused by the 
same motives that led to the demolition of certain other houses, 
whicli it was thought to resemble in fame. In Howe's Con- 
tinuation of Stowe, it was called a " new play-house;" so that 
it had lately been either built or rebuilt. This theatre stood 
opposite the Castle tavern. There is still in existence a 
passage, called Cockpit Alley, into Great Wild Street; and 
there is a Phoenix Alley, leading from Long Acre into Hart 
Street. 

The Phoenix was soon rebuilt : and the performances con- 
tinued till 1648, when they were again stopped by the 
Puritans who then swayed England, and who put an end to 
playhouses for some time. In the interval, some of the most 
admired of our old dramas were produced there, such as 
Marlowe's Jew of Malta; Hey wood's Woman killed with 
Kindness ; The Witch of Edmonton, by Rowley, Decker, 
and Ford ; Webster's White Devil, or Vittoria Colombona, 
Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts, and indeed many 
others.* It does not appear that Shakspeare or his immediate 
friends had any pieces performed there. He was a performer 
in other theatres ; and the pressure of court, as well as city, 
lay almost exclusively in their direction, till the growth of 
the western part of the metropolis divided it. The Phoenix 
known in his time was probably nearly as select a house as 
the Blackfriars. The company had the title of Queen's 
Servants (James's Queen), and the servants of the Lady 
Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia). 

A few years before the Restoration, Davenant, supported 
by some of the less scrupulous authorities, ventured to 
smuggle back something like the old entertainments, under 
the pretence of accompanying them with music; a trick 
understood in our times where a license is to be encroached 
upon. In 1656, he removed with them from Aldersgate Street 
to this house ; and, after the fluctuation of different companies 
hither and thither, the Cockpit finally resumed its rank as a 
royal theatre, under the direction of the famous Killigrew, 
whose set of players were called the King's company, as those 
under Sir William Davenant had the title of the Duke's. 
* See Baker's Biographia Dramatica, vol. ii. 



266 



DRURY LANE THEATRE. 



Killigrew, dissatisfied with the old theatre at the Cockpit, 
built a new one nearly on the site of the present, and opened 
it in 1663. This may be called the parent of Drury Lane 
theatre as it now stands. It was burnt in 1671-2, rebuilt by 
Sir Christopher Wren, and opened in 1674, with a prologue, 
from the pen of Dryden, from which time it stood till the 
year 1741. There had been some alterations in the structure 
of this theatre, which are said to have hurt the effect contem- 
plated by Sir Christopher Wren, and perhaps assisted its 
destruction; for seventy years is no great age for a public 




ENTRANCE FRONT OP DRURY LANE THEATRE, ERECTED BY GARRICK. 

building. Yet old Drury, as it was called, was said to have 
died of a " gradual decline." It was rebuilt, and became 
Old Drury the second; underwent the usual fate of theatres, 
in the year 1809 ; and was succeeded by the one now 
standing. 

It is customary to divide the eras of theatres according to 
their management; but, as managers become of little conse- 
quence to posterity, we shall confine ourselves in this as in 
other respects to names, with which posterity is familiar. In 
Shakspeare's time, Drury Lane appears to have been cele- 
brated for the best productions of the second-rate order of 
dramatists, a set of men who would have been first in any 
other age. We have little to say of the particulars of Drury 



ITS ANTIQUITY, ERAS, ETC. 267 

Lane at this period, no memorandums having come down to 
lis as they did afterwards. All we can imagine is, that, the 
Phoenix being much out of the way, with fields and country 
roads in the interval between court and city, and the per- 
formances taking place in the day time, the company probably 
consisted of the richer orders, the poorer being occupied in 
their labours. The court and the rich citizens went on 
horseback; the Duke of Buckingham in his newly-invented 
sedan. In the time of the Puritans we may fancy the visitors 
stealing in, as they would into a gambling-house. 

The era of the Restoration, or second era of the Stuarts, is 
that of the popularity of Ben Jonson's and Beaumont and 
Fletcher's plays, compared with Shakspeare's, though Davenant 
tried hard to revive him; of the plays of Dryden, Lee, and 
Otway ; and finally of the rise of comedy, strictly so called, in 
those of Wycherly, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. All 
these writers had to do with Drury Lane Theatre, some of 
them almost exclusively. Nineteen out of Dryden's twenty- 
seven plays were produced there ; seven out of Lee's eleven ; 
all the good ones of Wycherly (that is to say, all except the 
4 Gentleman Dancing-Master'); two of Congreve' s (the 'Old 
Bachelor' and 'Double Dealer'), and all Farquhar's, except 
the ' Beaux' Stratagem.' Otway 's best pieces came out at the 
Duke's Theatre ; and Vanbrugh's in the Haymarket.* This 
may be called the second era of Drury Lane, or rather the 
second and third; the former, which is Dryden's and Lee's, 
having for its principal performers Hart, Mohun, Lacy, 
Goodman, Nell Gwynn, and others; the latter, which was 
that of Congreve and Farquhar, presenting us with Cibber, 
Wilks, Booth, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle. The two, 
taken together, began with the Eestoration and ended with 
George II. 

Sir Richard Steele and the sentimental comedy came in at 
the close of the third era, and may be said to constitute the 
fourth; which, in his person, did not last long. Steele, 
admirable as an essayist, and occasionally as humorous as 
any dramatist in a scene or two, was hampered in his plays 
by the new moral ambition now coming up, which induced 
him to show, not so much what people are, as his notions of 
what they ought to be. This has never been held a legiti- 
mate business of the stage, which, in fact, is nothing else than 
what its favourite metaphor declares it, a glass of men and 
* See Baker, passim. 



268 OLD DRURY 

manners, in which they are to see themselves as they actually 
exist. It is the essence of the wit and dialogue of society 
brought into a focus. Steele was manager of Drury Lane 
Theatre, and made as bad a one as improvidence and animal 
spirits could produce. 

The sentimental comedy continued into the next or fifth 
Drury Lane era, which was that of Garrick, famous for his 
great reputation as an actor, and for his triumphant revival of 
Shakspeare's plays, which have increased in popularity ever 
since. Not that he revived them in the strictest sense of the 
word; for the attempt was making when he came to town; 
but he hastened and exalted the success of it. 

The last era before the present one was that of Sheridan, 
who, though he began with Covent Garden, produced four 
out of his seven pieces at this theatre; where he showed 
himself a far better dramatist, and a still worse manager than 
Steele. 

We shall now endeavour to possess our readers with such 
a sense of these different periods, as may enable them to 
" live o'er each scene," not indeed of the plays, but of the 
general epochs of Old Drury ; to go into the green-room with 
Hart and Nell Gwyn ; to see Mrs. Oldfield swim on the stage 
as Lady Betty Modish; to revive the electrical shock of 
Garrick's leap upon it, as the lively Lothario; — in short, to 
be his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, and 
make one of the successive generations of play-goers, now in 
his peruke a la Charles II, and now in his Ramillie wig, or 
the bobs of Hogarth. Did we introduce him to all this our- 
selves, we should speak with less confidence; but we have a 
suceesssion of play-goers for his acquaintance, who shall 
make him doubt whether he really is or is not his own 
ancestor, so surely shall they place him beside them in 
the pit. 

And first, for the immortal and most play-going Pepys. 
To the society of this j oiliest of government officers, we 
shall consign our reader and ourselves during the reign of 
Charles II. ; and if we are not all three equally intimate with 
old Drury at that time, there is no faith in good company. 
By old Drury, we understand both the theatres ; the Cockpit 
or Phoenix and the new one built by Killigrew, which took 
the title of " King's Theatre." There was a cockpit at White- 
hall, or court theatre, to which Pepys occasionally alludes; 
but after trying in vain to draw a line between such of his 



IN THE TIME OF CHARLES II. 269 

memorandums as might be retained and omitted, we here 
give up the task as undesirable, the whole harmonizing in one 
mass of theatrical gossip, and making us acquainted col- 
laterally, even with what he is not speaking of. We have 
not, indeed, retained everything, but we have almost. 

We now, therefore, pass Drury House, proceed up the lane 
by my Lord Craven's garden, and turn into Russell Street 
amongst a throng of cavaliers in flowing locks, and ladies 
with curls a la Valliere. Some of them are in masks, but 
others have not put theirs on. We shall see them masquing 
as the house grows full. It is early in the afternoon. There 
press a crowd of gallants, who have already got enough wine. 
Here, as fast as the lumbering coaches of that period can do 
it, dashes up to the door my lord Duke of Buckingham, 
bringing with him Buckhurst and Sedley. There comes a 
greater, though at that time a humbler man, to wit, John 
Dryden, in a coat of plain drugget, which by and by his fame 
converted into black velvet. He is somewhat short and 
stout, with a roundish dimpled face and a sparkling eye; 
and, if scandal says true, by his side is "Madam " Reeves, a 
beautiful actress ; for the ladies of the stage were so entitled 
at that time. Horses and coaches throng the place, with 
here and there a sedan; and, by the pulling off of hats, we 
find that the king and his brother James have arrived. The 
former nods to his people as if he anticipated their mutual 
enjoyment of the play; the latter affects a graciousness to 
match, but does not do it very well. As soon as the king 
passes in, there is a squeeze and a scuffle ; and some blood is 
drawn, and more oaths uttered, from which we hasten to 
escape. Another scuffle is silenced on the king's entrance, 
which also makes the gods quiet; otherwise, at no period 
were they so loud. The house is not very large, nor very 
well appointed. Most of the ladies masque themselves in the 
pit and boxes, and all parties prepare for a play that shall 
render it proper for the remainder to do so. The king 
applauds a new French tune played by the musicians. 
Gallants, not very sober, are bowing on all sides of us to 
ladies not very nice ; or talking to the orange girls, who are 
ranged in front of the pit with their backs to the stage. We 
hear criticisms on the last new piece, on the latest panegyric, 
libel, or new mode. Our friend Pepys listens and looks 
everywhere, tells all who is who, or asks it ; and his neigh- 
bours think him a most agreeable fat little gentleman. The 



270 PEPYS AND 

curtain rises : enter Mistress Marshall, a pretty woman, and 
speaks a prologue which makes all the ladies hurry on their 
masks, and convulses the house with laughter. Mr. Pepys 
" do own " that he cannot help laughing too, and calls the 
actress " a merry jade; " " but, lord ! " he says, " to see the 
difference of the times, and but two years gone." And then 
he utters something between a sigh and a chuckle, at the 
recollection of his Presbyterian breeding, compared with the 
jollity of his expectations. 

But let us hear our friend's memorandums : — 

"29th (September 1662). To the King's Theatre, where we saw 

* Midsummer's Night's Dream,' which I had never seen before, nor 
shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I 
saw in my life. [The gods certainly had not made Pepys poetical, 
except on the substantial side of things.] 

" 5th (January 1662-3). To the Cockpit, where we saw ' Claracilla,' 
a poor play, done by the King's house; but neither the king nor 
queen were there, but only the duke and duchess. 

" 23d (February, 1662-3). We took coach and to court, and there 
we saw ' The Wilde Gallant,' performed by the King's house, but it 
was ill acted. The king did not seem pleased at all, the whole play, 
nor anybody else. My Lady Castlemaine was all worth seeing to- 
night, and little Stewart. [This is Miss, or as the designation then 
was, Mrs. Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond. ' The Wild 
Gallant ' was Dryden's first play, and was patronised by Lady 
Castlemaine, afterwards not less notorious as Duchess of Cleveland. 
Miss Stewart and she were rival beauties.] 

" 1st (February, 1663-4). To the King's Theatre, and there saw 
the * Indian Queen ' (by Sir Robert Howard and Dryden) ; which 
indeed is a most pleasant show, and beyond my expectation the play 
good, but spoiled with the rhyme, which breaks the sense. But 
above my expectation most, the eldest Marshall did do her part most 
excellently well as I have heard a woman in my life; but her voice 
is not so sweet as Ianthe's: but, however, we come home mightily 
contented. 

" 1st (January, 1664). To the King's house, and saw 'The Silent 
Woman ' (Ben Jonson's); but methought not so well done or so good 
a play as I formerly thought it to be. Before the play was done, it 
fell such a storm of hayle, that we in the middle of the pit were fain 
to rise, and all the house in a disorder. 

" 2nd (August, 1664). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 

* Bartholomew Fayre' (Ben Jonson's), which do still please me; and 
is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world, I believe. I chanced 
to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery; 
that is, is going to build a house in Moorfields, wherein we will have 
common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to 
act six weeks at a time: where we shall have the best scenes and 
machines, the best musique, and everything as magnificent as in 
Christendome, and to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and 
other persons from Italy. 

"4th (August, 1664). To play at the King's house, ' The Rivall 



HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 271 

Ladies ' (Dryden's), a very innocent and most pretty witty play. I 
was much pleased with it, and it being given me, I look upon it as no 
breach of my oath. [Pepys means that he had made a vow not to 
spend money on theatres, but that he was now treated to a play.] 
Here we hear that Clun, one of their best actors, was, the last night, 
going out of town after he had acted the Alchymist (wherein was one 
of his best parts that he acts), to his countrv house, set upon and 
murdered ; one of the rogues taken, an Irish fellow. It seems most 
cruelly butchered and bound. The house will have a great miss of 
him. [Chin's body was found at Kentish Town in a ditch. Pepys 
went to see the place.] 

" 11th (October, 1664). Luellin tells me what an obscene loose 
play this ' Parson's Wedding ' is (by Tom Killigrew), that is acted by 
nothing but women at the King's house. 

" 14th (January, 1664-5). To the King's house, there to see ' Vul- 
pone,' a most excellent play (Ben Jonson's); the best, I think, I ever 
saw, and well acted. 

• c 19th (March, 1666). After dinner we walked to the King's play- 
house, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider. 
But God knows when they will begin to act again ; but my business 
here was to see the inside of the stage, and all the tiring-rooms and" 
machines ; and, indeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see 
their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things 
there was; here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there 
a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and 
particularly Lacy's wardrobe and Shotrell's. But then again to 
think how fine they show on the stage by candlelight, and how poor 
things they are to look at too near hand, is not pleasant at all. The 
machines are fine, and the paintings very pretty. 

" 7th (December, 1666). To the King's playhouse, where two acts 
were almost done when I came in; and there I sat with my cloak about 
my face, and saw the remainder of ' The Mayd's Tragedy ; ' a good 
play, and well acted, especially by the younger Marshall, who is be- 
come a pretty good actor; and is the first play I have seen in either 
of the houses, since before the great plague, they having acted now 
about fourteen days publickly. But I was in mighty pain, lest I 
should be seen by anybody to be at the play. [The plague seems to 
have made it an indecorum to resume visits to the theatre very 
speedily. Pepys had been educated among the Commonwealth -men, 
for whom he never seems to have got rid of a respect. The contrast 
aggravated his festivity.] 

" 8th (December, 1666). To the King's playhouse, and there 
did see a good part of 'The English Monsieur' (by James Howard), 
which is a mighty pretty play, very witty and pleasant. And the 
women do very well; but above all, little Nelly. [Nell Gwynn, not 
long entered upon the stage.] 

" 27th (December, 1666). By coach to the King's playhouse, and 
there saw 'The Scornful Lady ' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), well acted; 
Doll Common doing Abigail most excellently, and Knipp the widow 
very well (and will be an excellent actor, I think). In other parts the 
play not so well done as need be by the old actors. 

" 3rd (January, 1666-7). Alone to the King's house, and there saw 
'The Customeof the Country' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), the second 
time of its being acted, wherein Knipp does the widow well; but cf 



272 PEPYS AND 

all the plays that ever I did see, the worst, having neither plot, lan- 
guage nor anything on the earth that is acceptable; only Knipp sings 
a song admirably. [Mistress Knipp was a particular acquaintance of 
our friend's.] 

"23rd (January, 1666-7). To the King's house, and there saw the 
'Humourous Lieutenant' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), a silly play, I 
think; only the spirit in it that grows very tall, and then sinks again 
to nothing, having two heads breeding upon one, and then Knipp's 
singing did please us. Here in a box above we spied Mrs. Pierse ; 
and going out they called us ; and so we staid for them ; and Knipp 
took us all in and brought us to Nelly (Nell Gwynn), a most pretty 
woman, who acted the great part of Coelia to-day very fine, and did it 
pretty well : I kissed her, and so did my wife ; and a mighty pretty 
soul she is. We also saw Mrs. Ball, which is my little Roman-nose 
black girl, that is mighty pretty; she is usually called Betty. Knipp 
made us stay in the box, and see the dancing preparatory to to- 
morrow for the ' Goblins,' a play of Suckling's, not acted these twenty 
years ; which was pretty. 

"5th (February, 1666-7). To the King's house to see 'The Chances' 
(Beaumont and Fletcher's). A good play I find it, and the actors 
most good in it. And pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very 
properly, ' All night I weepe ; ' and sung it admirably. The whole 
play pleases me well : and most of all, the sight of many fine ladies ; 
among others, my lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Middleton : the latter of 
the two hath also a very excellent face and body, I think. And so 
home in the dark over the ruins with a link. [The ruins are those of 
the city, occasioned by the fire. Mr. Pepys lived in Creed Lane, where 
the Navy Office then was, in which he had an appointment.] 

"18th (February, 1666-7). To the King's house, to 'The Mayd's 
Tragedy' (Biaumont and Fletcher's) ; but vexed all the while with 
two talking ladies and Sir Charles Sedley ; yet pleased to hear the 
discourse, he being a stranger. And one of the ladies would and did 
sit with her mask on all the play, and being exceedingly witty as ever 
I heard a woman, did talk most pleasantly with him ; but was, I 
believe, a virtuous woman and of quality. He would fain know who 
she was, but she would not tell; yet did give him many pleasant hints 
of her knowledge of him, by that means setting his brains at work to 
find out who she was, and did give him leave to use all means to find 
out who she was, but pulling off her mask. He was mighty witty, 
and she also making sport with him mighty inoffensively, that more 
pleasant rencontre I never heard. But by that means lost the plea- 
sure of the play wholly, to which now and then Sir Charles Sedley's 
exceptions against both words and pronouncing were very pretty. 
[This is the famous wit and man of pleasure. We have him before 
us, as if we were present, together with a curious specimen of the 
manners of these times. The pit, though subject to violent scuffles, 
greatly occasioned by the wearing of swords, seems to have contained 
as good company as the opera pit does now.] 

"2nd (March, 1666-7). After dinner with my wife to the King's 
house, to see ' The Mayden Queen,' a new play of Dryden's, r.iighty 
commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit : and the 
truth is, there is a comical part, played by Nell, which is Florimell, 
that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman. 
The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so great per- 



HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 273 

formance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as 
Nell do this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she 
comes in like a young gallante; and hath the motions and carriage of 
a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I con- 
fess, admire her. 

"25th (March, 1666-7). To the King's playhouse, and by and by 
comes Mr. Lowther and his wife and mine, and into a box, forsooth, 
neither of them being dressed, which I was almost ashamed of. Sir 
W. Pen and I in the pit, and here saw the ' May den Queen ' again ; 
■which, indeed, the more I see the more I like, and is an excellent 
play, and so done by Nell her merry part, as cannot be better done in 
nature. 

"9th (April, 1667). To the King's house, and there saw the ' Taming 
of the Shrew,' which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally 
is but a mean play ; and the best part ' Sawny,' done by Lacy ; and 
hath not half its life, by reason of the words, I suppose, not being 
understood, at least by me. [This was one of the rifacimentos of 
Shakspeare, by which he was to be rendered palatable.] 

" 15th (April, 1667). To the King's house, by chance, where a new 
play : so full as I never saw it ; I forced to stand all the while close to 
the very door till I took cold, and many people went away for want of 
room. The King and Queene and Duke of York and Duchesse there, 
and all the court, and Sir W. Coventry. The play called 'The 
Change of Crownes;' a play of Ned Howard's, the best that I ever 
saw at that house, being a great play and serious ; only Lacy did act 
the country gentleman come up to court with all the imaginable wit 
and plainness about the selling of places, and doing everything for 
money. The play took very much. 

" 16th (April, 1667). Knipp tells me the King was so angry at the 
liberty taken by Lacy's part to abuse him to his face, that he com- 
manded they should act no more, till Moone (Mohun) went and got 
leave for them to act again, but not in this play. The King mighty 
angry; and it was bitter indeed, but very fine and witty. I never was 
more taken with a play than I am with this ' Silent Woman ' (Ben 
Johnson's) as old as it is, and as often as I have seen it. [Ned 
Howard, the author of 'The Change of Crownes,' was one of the sons 
of the Earl of Berkshire, and though of a family who helped to bring 
in the King, was probably connected with the Presbyterians, and dis- 
gusted, like many of the royalists on that side, by the disappoinments 
they had experienced in church and state. Dry den, who married one 
of his sisters, was of a Presbyterian stock. Ned, however, who after- 
wards became the butt of the wits, was not very nice, and might have 
' committed himself,' as the modern phrase is, in his mode of conduct- 
ing his satire] . 

" 20th (April, 1667). Met Mr. Eolt, who tells me the reason of no 
play to-day at the King's house — that Lacy had been committed to 
the porter's lodge, for his acting his part in the late new play ; and 
being thence released to come to the King's house, he there met with 
Ned Howard, the poet of the play, who congratulated his release ; 
upon which Lacy cursed him, as that it was the fault of his non- 
sensical play that was the cause of his ill-usage. Mr. Howard did 
give him some reply, to which Lacy answered him that he was more 
a fool than a poet j upon which Howard did give him a blow on the 

T 



274 PIPYS AND 

face with his glove ; on which Lacy, having a cane in his hand, did 
give him a blow over the pate. Here Rolt and others, that discoursed 
of it in the pit, did wonder that Howard did not run him through, he 
being too mean a fellow to fight with. But Howard did not do any- 
thing but complain to the King ; so the whole house is silenced : and 
the gentry seem to rejoice much at it, the house being become too 
insolent. 

*' 1st (May, 1667). Thence away to the King's playhouse, and saw 
'Love in a Maze:' but a sorry play; only Lacy's clown's part, which 
he did most admirably indeed ; and I am glad to find the rogue at 
liberty again. Here was but little, and that ordinary company. We 
sat at the upper bench, next the boxes ; and I find it do pretty well, 
and have the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which 
may be pleasant when there is good store. 

" 15th (August, 1667). And so we went to the King's house, and 
there saw ' The Merry Wives of Windsor ; ' which did not please me 
at all, in no part of it. 

" 17th (August, 1667). To the King's playhouse, where the house 
extraordinary full ; and there the King and Duke of York to see the 
new play, ' Queene Elizabeth's Troubles, and the History of Eighty- 
eight.' I confess I have sucked in so much of the sad story of Queene 
Elizabeth from my cradle, that I was ready to weep for her some- 
times ; but the play is the most ridiculous that sure ever came upon 
stage, and, indeed, is merely a show, only shows the true garb of the 
Queene in those days, just as we see Queene Mary and Queene 
Elizabeth painted ; but the play is merely a puppet play, acted by 
living puppets. Neither the design nor language better ; and one 
stands by and tells us the meaning of things : only I was pleased to 
-see Knipp dance among the milkmaids, and to hear her sing a song 
to Queene Elizabeth, and to see her come out in her nighte-gown 
with no lockes on, but her bare face, and hair only tied up in a 
knot behind ; which is the comeliest dress that ever I saw her in to 
her advantage. 

"22nd (August, 1667). With my lord Brouncker and his mistress 
to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Indian Emperour;' 
where I find Nell come again, which I am glad of; but was most 
infinitely displeased with her being put to act the Emperour's daughter, 
which is a great and serious part, which she does most basely. 

"14th (September, 1667). To the King's playhouse, to see 'The 
Northerne Castle, (quaere Lasse, by Richard Brome ?) which I think 
I never did see before. Knipp acted in it, and did her part very 
extraordinary well; but the play is but a mean sorry play. 

" , my wife, and Mercer, and I, away to the King's playhouse, 

to see ' The Scornful Lady' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), but it being 
now three o'clock, there was not one soul in the pit ; whereupon, for 
shame, we could not go in ; but against our wills, went all to see ' Tu 
Quoque' again (by John Cooke), where there was pretty store of 
company. Here we saw Madame Morland, who is grown mighty fat, 
but is very comely. Thence to the King's house, upon a Avager of 
mine with my wife, that there would be no acting there to-day, there 
being no company : so I went in and found a pretty good company 
there, and saw their dance at the end of the play. [There is a confu- 
sion in the memorandum under this date.] 



HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 275 

"20th (September, 1667). By coach to the King's playhouse, and 
there saw 'The Mad Couple' (by Richard Brome), my wife having 
been at the same play with Jane in the 18c?. seat. 

"25th (September, 1667). I to the King's playhouse, my eyes 
being so bad since last night's straining of them, that I am hardly 
able to see, besides the pain that I have in them. The play was a 
new play; and infinitely full; the King and all the court almost there. 
It is "The Storme,' a play of Fletcher's; which is but so-so, me- 
thinks; only there is a most admirable dance at the end, of the ladies, 
in a military manner, which indeed did please me mightily. 

" 5th (October 1667.) To the King's house; and there going in met 
with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms ; and to the 
women's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, 
and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. And into the scene- 
room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the 
questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of 
'Flora's Figarys,' which was acted to-day. But, lord! to see how 
they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make me 
loath them, and what base company of men comes among them, and 
how lewdly they talk . And how poor the men are in clothes, and 
yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light, is very 
observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in 
the pit, was strange ; the other house carrying away all the people at 
the new play, and is said now-a-days to have generally most company, 
as having better players. By and by into the pit, and there saw the 
play, which is pretty good. 

" 19th (October 1667). Full of my desire of seeing my Lord 
Orrery's new play this afternoon at the King's house, ' The Black 
Prince,' the first time it is acted; where, though we came by two 
o'clock, yet there was no room in the pit, but were forced to go into 
one of the upper boxes at 4s. a piece, which is the first time I ever 
sat in a box in my life. And in the same box came by and by, be- 
hind me, my Lord Barkely and his lady; but I did not turn my face 
to them to be known, so that I was excused from giving them my seat. 
And this pleasure I had, that from this place the scenes do appear 
very fine indeed, and much better than in the pit. The house infinite 
full, and the King and Duke of York there. The whole house was 
mightily pleased all along till the reading of a letter, which was so 
long and so unnecessary, that they frequently began to laugh, and to 
hiss twenty times, that had it not been for the King's being there, 
they had certainly hissed it off the stage. 

"23d (October 1667). To the King's playhouse, and saw 'The 
Black Prince;' which is now mightily bettered by that long letter 
being printed, and so delivered to everybody at their going in, and 
some short reference made to it in the play. [This is in the style of 
what Buckingham called "insinuating the plot into the boxes."] 

" 1st (November 1667). To the King's playhouse, and there caw a 
silly play and an old one, ' The Taming of the Shrew.' 

" 2d (November 1667). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
'Henry the Fourth;' and, contrary to expectation, was pleased in 
nothing more than in Cartwright's speaking of Falstaffe's speech 
about 'What is honour?' The house full of parliament-men, it 
being holyday with them: and it was observable how a gentleman of 
good habit sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of 

T 2 



276 fEPYS AtfD 

play, did drop down as dead, being choked ; but with much ado 
Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him 
to life again. 

'•26th (December 1667). With my wife to the King's playhouse, 
and there saw ' The Surprizall' by Sir Robert Howard, brother of 
Ned) ; which did not please me to-day, the actors not pleasing me ; 
and especially Nell's acting of a serious part which she spoils. 

"28th (December 1667). To the King's house, and there saw 
4 The Mad Couple,' which is but an ordinary play ; but only Nell's 
and Hart's mad parts are most excellent done, but especially hers: 
which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill she do any serious 
part, as, the other day, just like a fool or changeling; and, in a mad 
part, do beyond all imitation almost. It pleased us mightily to see 
the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the chil- 
dren brought on the stage ; the child crying, she by force got upon 
the stage, and took up her child, and carried it away off the stage 
from Hart. Many fine faces here to-day. 

"7th (January 1667-8). To the Nursery [qy. in Barbican, for 
children performers?], but the house did not act to-day; and so I to 
the other two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there 
did, by this means, for nothing, see an act in ' The Schoole of Com- 
pliments ' at the Duke of York's house, and 'Henry the Fourth' at 
the King's house ; but not liking either of the plays, I took my coach 
again, and home. [It would here seem, that a man who did not 
choose to pay for a seat, might witness a play for nothing.] 

" 11th (January 1667-8). To the King's house, to see ' The Wild- 
Goose Chase' (Beaumont and Fletcher's). In this play I met. with 
nothing extraordinary at all, but very dull inventions and designs. 
Knipp came and sat by us, and her talk pleased me a little, she tell- 
ing me how Miss Davies is for certain going away from the Duke's 
house, the King being in love with her ; and a house is taken for her, 
and furnishing; and she hath a ring given her already worth 600/.: 
that the King did send several times for Nelly, and she was with him ; 
and I am sorry for it, and can hope for no good to the state from 
having a prince so devoted to his pleasure. She told me also of a play 
shortly coming upon the stage, of Sir Charles Sedley's, which, she 
thinks, will be called ' The Wandering Lady's,' a comedy that she 
thinks will be most pleasant; and also another play called 'The 
Duke of Lorane;' besides 'Cataline,' which she thinks, for want of the 
clothes which the King promised them, will not be acted for a good 
while. 

" 20th (February 1667-8). Dined, and by one o'clock to the King'? 
house; a new play, 'The Duke of Lerma,' of Sir Robert Howard's-, 
where the King and court was ; and Knipp and Nell spoke the pro- 
logue most excellently, especially Knipp, who spoke beyond any 
creature I ever heard. The play designed to reproach our King with 
his mistresses, that I was troubled for it, and expected it should be 
interrupted ; but it ended all well ; which salved me. 

"27th (February 1667-8.) With my wife to the King's house, to 
see 'The Virgin Martyr' by (Massinger), the first time it hath been 
acted a great while : and it is mighty pleasant ; not that the play is 
worth much, but it is finely acted by Beck Marshall. But that which 
did please me beyond anything in the world, was the wind-musique 
when the angel comes downj which is so sweet that it ravished me, 



HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 277 

and, indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really 
sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife; that 
neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was 
able to think oi anything, but remained all night transported, so as I 
could not believe that ever any musique hath that real command over 
the soul of a man, as this did upon me; and makes me resolve to 
practise wind-musique, and to make my wife do the like. [Pepys's 
use of the word " sick," and his resolution to make his wife practise 
the hautboy, are very ludicrous. His love of music, however, is 
genuine. He was an amateur composer. On the 23d Feb. 1666, he 
has the following memorandum : " Comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, 
and I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her 
my song of 'Beauty retire,' which she sings and makes go most 
rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be."] 

"6th (March 1667-8.) After dinner to the King's house, and 
there saw part of the ' Discontented ColonelP (Sir John Suckling's 

* Brennoralt'). 

"7th (April 1668). To the King's house, and there saw 'The 
English Monsieur,' (sitting for privacy sake in an upper box): the 
play hath much mirth in it, as to that particular humour. After the 
play done, I down to Knipp, and did stay her undressing herself ; 
and there saw the several players, men and women, go by; and pretty 
to see how strange they are all, one to another, after the play is done. 
Here I hear Sir W. Davenant is just now dead, and so, who will 
succeed him in the mastership of the house is not yet known. The 
eldest Davenport is, it seems, gone from this house to be kept by 
somebody; which I am glad of, she being a very bad actor. Mrs. 
Knipp tells me that my Lady Castlemaine is mighty in love with 
Hart of their house, and he is much with her in private, and she goes 
to him and do give him many presents; and that the thing is most 
certain, and Beck Marshall only privy to it, and the means of bringing 
them together: which is a very odd thing; and by this means she is 
even with the King's love to Mrs. Davies. 

"28th (April 1668). To the King's house, and there did see ' Love 
in a Maze,' (the author is not mentioned in Baker); wherein very 
good mirth of Lacy the clown, and Winter shell, the country-knight, 
his master. 

" 1st (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 

* Surprizall;' and a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the 
cupola at top. 

" 7th (May 1668). To the King's house; where going in for Knipp, 
the play being done, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off of the 
stage, and look mighty fine, and pretty and noble; and also Nell in 
her boy's clothes mighty pretty. But lord ! their confidence, and 
how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the 
stage, and how confident they are in their talk. Here was also 
Haynes, the incomparable dancer of the King's house. 

" 16th (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 
best part of 'The Sea Voyage' (Beaumont and Fletcher), where 
Knipp did her part of sorrow very well. 

" 18th (May 1668). It being almost twelve o'clock, or little more, 
to the King's playhouse, where the doors were not then open ; but 
presently they did open, and we in, and find many people already 
come in by private ways into the pit, it being the first day of Sir 



278 PEPYS AND 

Charles Sedley's new play so long expected * The Mulberry Garden/ 
of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great mat- 
ters. I having sat here a while and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, 
getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Kose Tavern (Will's, in 
Kussell Street), and there got half a breast of mutton off the spit, and 
dined all alone. And so to the playhouse again, where the King and 
Queene by and by come, and all the court, and the house infinitely 
full. But the play, when it come, though there was here and there a 
pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the 
play had nothing extraordinary in it at all, neither of language nor 
design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh nor pleased from 
the beginning to the end, nor the company ; insomuch that I have not 
been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think. 

"30th (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
* Philaster ;' where it is pretty to see how I could remember almost 
all along, ever since I was a boy, Arethusa, the part which I was to 
have acted at Sir Kobert Cooke's ; and it was very pleasant to me, 
but more to think what a ridiculous thing it would have been for me 
to have acted a beautiful woman. 

"22nd (June 1668). To the King's playhouse, and saw an act 
or two of the new play, ' Evening Love' again (Dryden's) but like it 
not. 

" 11th (July 1668). To the King's playhouse, to see an old play of 
Shirley's, called ' Hyde Parke,' the first day acted ; where horses are 
brought upon the stage ; but it is but a very moderate play, only an 
excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall. 

"31st (July 1668). To the King's house, to see the first day of 
Lacy's ' Monsieur Kagou,' now new acted. The King and court all 
there, and mighty merry : a farce. 

" 15th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse to see a new 
play, acted but yesterday, a translation out of French by Dryden, 
called 'The Ladys a la Mode' [probably the Precieuses, but not 
translated by Dryden] : so mean a thing as when they came to say it 
would be acted again to-morrow, both he that said it (Beeston) and 
the pit fell a-laughing. 

" 19th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
the ' Silent Woman ;' the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote : 
and sitting by Shad well the poet, he was big with admiration of it. 
Here was my Lord Brouncker and W. Pen and their ladies in the box, 
being grown mighty kind of a sudden ; but, God knows, it will 
last but a little while, I dare swear. Knipp did her part mighty 
well. 

" 28th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
'The City Match' (by Jasper Maine), not acted these thirty years, 
and but a silly play ; the King and court there ; the house, for the 
women's sake, mighty full. 

" 14th (October 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
1 The Faithful Shepherdess' (Fletcher's), that I might hear the French 
eunuch sing ; which I did to my great content ; though I do admire 
his actions as much as his acting, being both beyond all I ever saw 
or heard. 

" 2nd (December 1678). So she (Mrs. Pepys) and I to the King's 
playhouse, and there saw 'The Usurper;' a pretty good play in all 
but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is 



HIS THEATRICAL GOSSIP. 279 

mighty silly. [The Usurper was by Ned Howard, who seems to have 
wished to show how impartial he could be.] 

" 19th (December 1678). My wife and I by hackney to the King's 
playhouse, and there, the pit being full, sat in the box above, and saw 
' Catsdine's Conspiracy' (Ben Jonson's), yesterday being the first day: 
a play of much good sense and words to read, but that do appear the 
worst upon the stage, I mean the least diverting, that ever I saw any, 
though most fine in clothes ; and a fine scene of the senate and of a 
fight as ever I saw in my life. We sat next to Betty Hall, that did 
belong to this house, and was Sir Philip Howard's mistress ; a mighty 
pretty wench. 

" 7th (January 1668-9). My wife and I to the King's pla,, house, 
and there saw ' The Island Princesse' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), the 
first time I ever saw it ; and it is a pretty good play, many good 
things being in it, and a good scene of a town on fire. We sat in an 
upper box, and the merry Jade Nell came in and sat in the next box ; 
a bold slut, who lay laughing there upon people, and with a comrade 
of hers, of the Duke's house, that came to see the play. 

"llth (January 1668-9). Abroad with my wife to the King's 
playhouse, and there saw ' The Joviall Crew' (by Eichard Brome), ill 
acted to what it was in Clun's time, and when Lacy could dance. 

"19th (January 1668-9). To the King's house to see 'Horace' 
(translated from Corneille by Charles Cotton) ; this is the third day 
of its acting ; a silly tragedy ; but Lacy hath made a farce of several 
dances — between each act one ; but his words are but silly, and in- 
vention not extraordinary as to the dances. [Pepys adds, with 
seeming approbation, an instance of satire on the Dutch, too gross to 
extract, and highly disgraceful to that age of "fine ladies and 
gentlemen."] 

"2nd (February 1668-9). To dinner at noon, where I find Mr. 
Sheres ; and there made a short dinner, and carried him with us to 
the King's playhouse, where ' The Heyresse,' notwithstanding Kynas- 
ton's being beaten, is acted ; and they say the King is very angry 
with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But 
his part is done by Beetson, who is fain to read it out ot a book all 
the while, and thereby spoils the part, and almost the play, it being 
one of the best parts in it : and though the design is, in the first 
conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play; wrote, 
they say, by my Lord Newcastle. But it was pleasant to see Beeston 
come in with others, supposing it to be dark, and yet forced to read 
his part by the light of the candles; and this I observing to a gentle- 
man, that sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith and spread it 
up and down. But that that pleased me most in the play, is the first 
song that Knipp sings (she sings three or four); and indeed it was 
very finely sung, so as to make the whole house clap her. 

" 6th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and there in an 
upper box (where come in Colonel Poynton and Doll Stacey, who is 
very fine, and by her wedding-ring I suppose he hath married her at 
last), did see the ' Moor of Venice :' but ill acted in most parts, Moon 
(which did a little surprise me) not acting Iago's part by much so 
well as Clun used to do : nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's ; 
nor indeed Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did. 

" 9th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 
the 'Island Princesse,' which I like mighty well as an excellent play; 



280 MOHUN AND HART. 

and here we find Kynaston to be well enough to act again ; which he 
do very well, after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley's appointment. 
[Kynaston is generally supposed to have been taken for Sedley, and 
beaten for some offence of the baronet's. He affected to be Sedley's 
double.] 

"26th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and saw the 
4 Faithful Shepherdesse.' But, lord ! what an empty house, there not 
being, as I could see the people, so many as to make up above 10Z. in 
the whole house ! But I plainly discern the musick is the better, by 
how much the house the emptier." [The same thing was said by 
the great Handel, to console himself once, when he found a spare 
audience.] 

Of the performers mentioned in this curious theatrical 
gossip, one of them, Hart, had been a captain in the civil 
wars ; another, Mohun, a major ; and there was a third a 
quarter -master ; all on the royal side. Hart and Mohun were 
old actors, when Betterton was young ; and they lived to see 
him reckoned superior to either. The two were accustomed 
to act together, Hart generally in the superior character, as 
Brutus to the other's Cassius ; and both, like Betterton, acted 
in comedy as well as tragedy. They performed, for instance, 
Manly and Horner in { The Country Wife,' and there appears 
to have been less distinction in their styles of acting than is 
customary. If Hart shone in the Dorimant of ' Sir Fopling 
Flutter,' Mohun was highly applauded in Davenant's Valen- 
tine, in ' Wit without Money.' Mohun, however, appears to 
have excelled in the more ferocious parts of tragedy, as 
Catiline ; and Hart in the mixture of gaity with boldness, as 
in Hotspur and Alexander. His Alexander was particularly 
famous. Upon the whole, we should conclude, Mohun's to 
have the more artifical acting of the two, more like " the 
actor," in Partridge's sense of the word, but very fine never- 
theless, otherwise Rochester would hardly have admired him, 
as he is said to have done ; unless, indeed, it was out of spite 
to some other actor ; for he was much influenced by feelings 
of that kind. Perhaps, however, it was out of some chance 
predilection, The Duke of Buckingham is said to have pre- 
ferred Ben Jonson to Shakspeare, for no other reason than 
his having been introduced to him when a boy. The best 
compliment ever known to have been paid to Hart, is an 
anecdote recorded of Betterton. Betterton acted Alexander 
after Hart's time ; and " being at a loss," says Davies, " to 
recover a particular emphasis of that performer, which gave 
a force to some interesting situation of the part, he applied 
for information to the players who stood near him. At last, 



GOODMAN. 281 

one of the lowest of the company repeated the line exactly in 
Hart's key. Betterton thanked him heartily, and put. a piece 
of money into his hand, as a reward for so acceptable a 
service." * Hart had the reputation of being the first lover 
of Nell Gwyn, and one of the hundreds of the Duchess of 
Cleveland. 

Goodman was another of the favoured many. He was one 
of the Alexanders of his time, but does not appear to have 
been a great actor. He was a dashing impudent fellow, who 
boasted of his having taken "an airing" on the road to 
recruit his purse. He was expelled from Cambridge for 
cutting and defacing the portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, 
Chancellor of the University, but not loyal enough to his 
father to please Goodman. James II. pardoned the loyal 
highwayman, which Goodman (in Cibber's hearing) said 
" was doing him so particular an honour, that no man could 
wonder if his acknowledgement had carried him a little 
further than ordinary into the interest of that prince. But 
as he had lately been out of luck in backing his old master, 
he had now no way to get home the life he was out, upon his 
account, but by being under the same obligations to King 
William." f The meaning of this is understood to be, that 
Goodman offered to assassinate William, in consequence of his 
having had a pardon from James ; but the plot not succeed- 
ing, he turned king's evidence against James, in order to 
secure a pardon from William. This " pretty fellow" was 
latterly so easy in his circumstances, owing, it is supposed, to 
the delicate Cleveland, that he used to say he would never 
act Alexander the Great, but when he was certain that "his 
duchess " would be in the boxes to see him. 

The stage in that day was certainly not behind-hand with 
the court ; and as it had less conventional respectability in 
the eyes of the world, its private character was never so low. 
But we must do justice and not confound even the disreput- 
able. Poor Nell Gwynn, in a quarrel with one of the 
Marshalls, who reproached her with being the mistress of 
Lord Buckhurst, said she was mistress but of one man at a 
time, though she had been brought up in a bad house " to fill 
strong waters to the gentlemen ;" whereas her rebuker, 

* Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii., chap. 24. Most of the above 
particulars respecting Hart and Mohun have been gathered from that 
work. There are scarcely any records of them elsewhere. 

f Cibber's ' Apology,' ut supra, p. 226. 



282 NELL GWYNN. 

though a clergyman's daughter, was the mistress of three. 
This celebrated actress, who was as excellent in certain giddy 
parts of comedy as she was inferior in tragedy, was small of 
person, but very pretty, with a good-humoured face, and eyes 
that winked when she laughed. She is the ancestress of the 
ducal family of St. Albans, who are thought to have retained 
more of the look and complexion of Charles II. than any 
other of his descendants. Beauclerc, Johnson's friend, was 
like him ; and the black complexion is still in vigour. The 
King recommended her to his brother with his last breath, 
begging him " not to let poor Nelly starve." Burnet says 
she was introduced to the King by Buckingham, to supplant 
the Duchess of Cleveland ; but others tell us, he first noticed 
her in consequence of a hat of the circumference of a coach- 
wheel, in which Dryden made her deliver a prologue, as a set- 
off to an enormous hat of Pistol's at the other house, and which 
convulsed the spectators with laughter. If Nelly retained a 
habit of swearing, which was probably taught her when a 
child ( and it is clear enough from Pepys that she did), the 
poets did not discourage her. One of her epilogues by 
Dryden began in the following startling manner. It is 
entitled " An Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Ellen, when she was 
to be carried off dead by the Bearers." 

" Hold, are you mad, you damn'd confounded dog ? 
I am to rise and speak the epilogue." 

The poet makes her say of herself, in the course of the 
lines, that she was " a harmless little devil," and that she was 
slatternly in her dress. Lely painted her with a lamb under 
her arm. Mr. Pegge discovered that Charles made her a 
lady of the chamber to his queen. Pennant seems to think 
this was only a title ; but it is plain from Evelyn's Memoirs 
that she had apartments in Whitehall.* She died a few 
years after the King, at her house in Pall Mall. Nell was 
much libelled in her time, and among others by Sir George 

* "March 1st (1671). I thence walked with him through St. 
James's Parke to the garden, where I both saw and heard a very 
familiar discourse between .... and Mrs. Nellie, as they called an 
inpudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the 
top of the wall, and .... standing on ye greene walke under it. I 
was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walked to the 
Duchess of Cleveland, another lady of pleasure, and curse of our 
nation." — Evelyn's 'Memoirs,' ut supra, vol. ii., p. 339. It would be 
curious to know how Mr. Evelyn conducted himself during this time, 
if he and the King saw one another. 



DRAMATIC WRITERS. 283 

Etherege ;* very likely out of some personal pique or rejection, 
for such revenges were quite compatible with the " loves " of 
that age.f But she was a general favourite, nevertheless, 
owing to a natural good-heartedness which no course of life 
could overcome. Burnet's character of her is well known. 
" G-uin," says he, " the indiscreetest and wildest creature that 
ever was in a court, continued, to the end of that king's life, 
in great favour and was maintained at a vast expense. The 
Duke of Buckingham told me that when she was first brought 
to the King, she asked only five hundred pounds a year ; and 
the King refused it. But when he told me this, about four 
years after, he said, she had got of the King above sixty 
thousand pounds. She acted all persons in so lively a 
manner, and was such a constant diversion to the King, that 
even a new mistress could not drive her away. But after all 
he never treated her with the decencies of a mistress." J Nell 
Gwynn is said to have suggested to her royal lover the build- 
ing of Chelsea Hospital, and to have made him a present of 
the ground for it. 

Upon the whole the dramatic taste during the greater part 
of Charles's reign was false and artificial, particularly in 
tragedy. Etherege produced one good comedy, the pre- 
cursor of Wycherly and Congreve ; but Dryden, the reigning 
favourite, was not as great in dramatic as he was in other 
writing ; his heroic plays, and Lee's u Alexander," were 
admired, not so much for the beauties mixed with their 
absurdity, as for the improbable air they gave to a serious 
passion ; and the favourite plays of deceased authors were 
those of the most equivocal writers of the time of James, not 
the pure and profound nature of Shakspeare and his fellows. 
Otway flourished, but was not thought so great as he is now ; 
and even in Otway there is a hot bullying smack of the 
tavern, very different from the voluptuousness in Shakspeare. 
Towards the close of this reign comedy came to its height 
with Wycherly, who, almost as profligate in point of dialogue 
as any of his contemporaries, nevertheless hit the right vein 
of satire. Wycherly lived at the other end of Eussell Street, 
in Bow Street, where we shall see him shortly. 

* Miscellaneous Works of the Duke of Buckingham and others. 
1704, vol. i., p. 34. 

f The verses are attributed to Etherege ; but, from a Scotch rhyme 
in them of trull and will, are perhaps not his. 

$ History of His own Times, Edin. 1753, vol. i., p. 387. 



284 DRAMATIC WRITERS. 

We are now come to the time of Congreve, Mrs. Brace- 
girdle, and others ; Betterton remaining. Of these indivi- 
dually we have spoken before ; and therefore shall only 
observe that by the more serious examples of James II. and 
King William, the manners of the day were reforming, and 
those of the stage with them. We now find ourselves among 
audiences more composed, and witness plays less coarse, though 
with an abundance of double meaning and exuberantly witty. 
Coquetry and fashion are now the reigning stage goddesses, as 
mere wantonness was that of the age preceding. 

Farquhar and Yanbrugh succeeded, together with Cibber, 
Wilkes, Booth, and latterly Steele and Mrs. Oldfield. Yan- 
brugh does not belong to Drury Lane, but Farquhar does, 
with the rest ; and a lively place he made of it. He is Cap- 
tain Farquhar, has a plume in his hat, and prodigious animal 
spirits, with invention at will, and great good nature. Cap- 
tains abounded among the wits and adventurers of those days 
down to Captains Macheath and Gibbet. Yanbrugh was a 
captain; Steele at one time was Captain Steele; and Mrs. Old- 
field's father, though the son of a vinter, became Captain 
Oldfield, and genteelly ran out an estate. This is still the 
age of genuine comedy, and the stage is worthy of it. The 
tragedy was proportionably bad. Booth, indeed, was a good 
tragic actor, but he suited the age in being declamatory. He 
was the hero of Addison's Cato, once the favourite tragedy of 
the critics, now of nobody. 

Eowe was another artificial writer of tragedy, but not with- 
out a vein of feeling. It seems to have been thought in those 
times, as we may see by these authors, and by the tragedies of 
Banks and Lillo, that to be natural, an author was to be 
prosaical ; while, if he had any pretensions to be poetical, it 
was his business to — 

" wake the soul by tender strokes of art." 

The gradual approach, also, of this period to our own times, 
which are more critical in costume, and the pictures left to us 
of favourite performers in Hamlet and Hermione, dressed in 
wigs and hoop petticoats, render those outrages upon propriety 
still stranger to one's imagination. They set tragedy in a 
mock-heroical light. Cato wore a long peruke ; Alexandei 
the Great a wig and jack-boots ; and it was customary, down 
to Garrick's time, to dress Macbeth and other tragic general- 



COMPARISON BEWEEN WILES AND CIBBER. 285 

officers in a suit of brick-dust. "Booth enters," says 
Pope : — 

" Hark, the universal peal ! 

But has he spoken ? Not a syllable. 

What shook the stage and made the people stare ? 

Cato's long wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair.' 

The stare was not that of ridicule, but of admiration. All 
this makes the comedy of that period shine out the more as 
the only truth extant. Cherry, and Archer, and Sir Harry 
Wildair, and Sir John Brute, and my Lady Betty Modish, 
were like the age, and like the performers. 

To return to these. Wilks was the fine gentleman of that 
period. He was a friend of Farquhar's, and came to London 
with him from Dublin. Cibber, though he wrote a good 
comedy, would appear, by some accounts of him, to have been 
little more on the stage than a mimic of past actors. Steele, 
however, has a criticism on him and Wilks, in which he speaks 
of them both as perfect actors in their kinds'. 

" Wilks," he tells us, " has a singular talent in representing the 
graces of nature ; Cibber the deformity in the affectation of them. 
Were I a writer of plays, I should never employ either of them in parts 
which had not their bents this way. This is seen in the inimitable 
strain and run of good humour which is kept up in the character of 
Wildair, and in the nice and delicate abuse of understanding in that 
of Sir Novelty. Cibber, in another light, hits exquisitely the flat 
civility of an affected gentleman usher, and Wilks the easy frankness 
of a gentleman To beseech gracefully, to approach respect- 
fully, to pity, to mourn, to love, are the places wherein Wilks may be 
made to shine with the utmost beauty. To rally pleasantly, to scorn 
artfully, to flatter, to ridicule, and to neglect, are what Cibber would 
perform with no less excellence." * 

This criticism produced a letter to Steele from two inferior 
actors of that time, Bullock and Penkethman, who, rather 
than not be noticed at all, were willing to be bantered. They 
knew it would be done good-naturedly. Accordingly the 
"Tatler" says, 

" For the information of posterity I shall comply with this letter, 
and set these tw r o great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his 
Cato and Caesar. Mr. William Bullock and Mr. William Penkethman 
are of the same age, profession, and sex. They both distinguish them- 
selves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crab 
tree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable 
squall, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman 
devours cold chick with great applause ; Bullock's talent lies chiefly 
in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself 

* Tatler, No. 1S2. 



286 STORY of cibber's wig. 

under a table ; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. 
Mr. Penkethman has a great deal of money ; but Mr. Bullock is the 
taller man."* 

Off the stage, and behind the scenes, Cibber performed the 
part of a coxcomb of the first order. We shall not be pro- 
perly acquainted with Drury Lane at this period if we do not 
repeat his story of the wig. 

This was a peruke of his, famous in the part of Sir Fopling 
Flutter. It was so much admired, that Cibber used to have 
it brought upon the stage in a sedan, and put it on publicly, 
to the great content of the beholders. A set of curls so 
applauded was the next thing to a toast ; and accordingly 
Colonel, then Mr. Brett, whom the. toasts admired, could not 
rest till he had taken possession of it. 

"The first view," says Colley, "that fires the head of a young 
gentleman of this modish ambition, just broke loose from business, 
is to cut a figure (as they call it) in a side box at the play, from 
whence their next step is to the green-room behind the scenes, some- 
times their non ultra. Hither at last, then, in this hopeful quest of 
his fortune, came this gentleman-errant, not doubting but the fickle 
dame, while he was thus qualified to receive her, might be tempted to 
fall into his lap. And though, possibly, the charms of our theatrical 
nymphs might have their share in drawing him thither ; yet, in my 
observation, the most visible cause of his first coming was- a more 
sincere passion he had conceived for a fair full-bottomed periwig, 
which I then wore in my first play of the ' Fool in Fashion/ in the 
year 1695. For it is to be noted that the beaux of those days were of 
a quite different cast to the modern stamp, and had more of the state- 
liness of the peacock in their mien, than (which now seems to be their 
highest emulation) the pert of a lapwing. Now, whatever contempt 
philosophers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who was not to 
despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well, that so material 
an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, 
could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevo- 
lence than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one. This, 
perhaps, may soften the grave censure which so youthful a purchase 
might otherwise have laid upon him. In a word, he made his attack 
upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do for a lady of 
pleasure ; first, by a few familiar praises of her person, and then a 
civil inquiry into the price of it. But on his observing me a little 
surprised at the levity of his question about a fop's periwig, he began 
to rally himself with so much wit and humour upon the folly of his 
fondness for it, that he struck me with an equal desire of granting 
anything in my power to oblige so facetious a customer. This singular 
beginnining of our conversation, and the mutual laughs that ensued 
upon it, ended in an agreement to finish our bargain that night over a 
bottle."! 

* Tatler, No. 188. See also No. 7. 
f Apology, p. 303. 



MRS. OLDFIELD. 287 

Colonel Brett, being a man of " bonnes fortunes" married 
Savage's mother ! 

Mrs. Oldfield made such an impression in her day, and 
has been noticed by so many writers, that she must have a 
passage to herself. She was the daughter of Captain Oldfield 
above-mentioned, and went to live with her aunt, who kept 
the Mitre tavern in St. James's Market. Here, we are told, 
Captain Farquhar, overhearing Miss Nancy read a play 
behind the bar, v:as so struck " with the proper emphasis 
and agreeable turn "lie gave to each character, that he swore 
the girl was cut out for the stage." As she had always 
expressed an inclination for that way of life, and a desire of 
trying her fortune in it, her mother, on this encouragement, 
the next time she saw Captain Vanbrugh ( afterwards Sir 
John), who had a great respect for the family, acquainted 
hiii with Captain Farquhar's opinion, on which he desired to 
know whether her bent was most tragedy or comedy. Miss, 
being called in, informed him that her principal inclination 
was to the latter, having at that time gone through all Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's comedies ; and the play she was reading 
when Captain Farquhar dined there having been ' The 
Scornful Lady.' Captain Vanbrugh, shortly after, recom- 
mended her to Mr. Christopher Rich, who took her into the 
house at the allowance of fifteen shillings per week. 
However, her agreeable figure and sweetness of voice soon 
gave her the preference, in the opinion of the whole town, to 
all the young actresses of that time ; and the Duke of 
Bedford, in particular, being pleased to speak to Mr. Rich in 
her favour, he instantly raised her to twenty shillings per 
week. After which her fame and salary gradually increased, 
till at length they both attained that height which her merit 
entitled her to."* 

The new actress had a silver voice, a beautiful face and 
person, great good-nature, sprightliness, and grace, and 
became the fine lady of the stage in the most agreeable sense 
of the word. She also acted heroines of the sentimental 
order, and had an original part in every play of Steele. 
But she was particularly famous in the part of Lady Betty 
Modish, in " The Careless Husband" The name explains 
the character. Cibber tells us that he drew many of the 
strokes in it from her lively manner. 

* Baker's Biographia Dramatica, Art. Farquhar, vol. i., p. 155. 
Faithful Memoirs, &c., of Mrs. Anne Oldfield, by Egerton, p. 76. 



238 MRS. OLDFIELD. 

" Had her birth," he says, " placed her in a higher rank of life, she 
had certainly appeared in reality what in this play she only excellently 
acted, an agreeable gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her 
natural attractions. I have often seen her in private societies, where 
women of the best rank might have borrowed some part of their 
behaviour, without the least diminution of their sense or dignity. 
And this very morning, where I am now writing, at the Bath, 
November 11th, 1738, the same words were said of her by a lady of 
condition, whose better judgment of her personal merit in that light 
has emboldened me to repeat them. After her success in this 
character of higher life, all that nature had given her of the actress 
seemed to have risen to its full perfection : but the variety of her 
power could not be known till she was seen in a variety of characters, 
which, as fast as they fell to her, she equally excelled in. Authors 
had much more from her performance than they had reason to hope 
for, from what they had written for her ; and none had less than 
another, but as their genius, in the parts they allotted her, was more 
or less elevated. 

" In the wearing of her person she was particularly fortunate ; her 
figure was always improving to her thirty-sixth year ; but her ex- 
cellence in acting was never at a stand ; and the last new character 
she shone in (Lady Townly) was a proof that she was still able to do 
more, if more could have been done for her. She had one mark of 
good sense, rarely known in any actor of either sex but herself. I 
have observed several, with promising dispositions, very desirous of 
instruction at their first setting out ; but no sooner had they found 
their best account in it, than they were as desirous of being left to 
their own capacity, which they then thought would be disgraced by 
their seeming to want any farther assistance. But this was not 
Mrs. Oldfield's way of thinking ; for to the last year of her life she 
never undertook any part she liked, without being importunately 
desirous of having all the helps in it that another could possibly give 
her. By knowing so much herself, she found how much more there 
was of nature yet needful to be known. 

" Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint, that she was not 
able to take or improve. With all this merit, she was tractable, and 
less presuming in her station than several that had not half her pre- 
tensions to be troublesome. But she lost nothing by her easy conduct ; 
she had everything she asked, which she took care should be always 
reasonable, because she hated as much to be grudged as denied a 
civility. Upon her extraordinary action in the ' Provoked Husband,' 
the managers made her a present of fifty guineas more than her 
agreement, which never was more than a verbal one ; for they knew 
she was above deserting them to engage upon any other stage, and 
she was conscious they would never think it their interest to give her 
cause of complaint. In the last two months of her illness, when she 
was no longer able to assist them, she declined receiving her salary, 
though by her agreement she was entitled to it. Upon the whole she 
was, to the last scene she acted, the delight of her spectators."* 

This charming actress (Mrs. Oldfield) is said to have been 
the Flavia of " The Tatler" (No. 212). The catch-penny 
* Apology, p. 250. 



MRS. OLDFIELD. 289 

writer of her memoirs equivocally speaks of it as her " vera 
effigies" and on his authority the assertion has been repeated. 
But as a Flavia mentioned in the same work (No. 239) turns 
out to be Miss Osborne, afterwards the wife of Bishop Atter- 
bury (upon whom he wrote the lines on a fan there inserted, 
beginning 

" Flavia the least and slightest toy 
Can with resistless art employ,") 

and as the first Flavia is praised for her quality and the 
extreme simplicity of her manners (which, according to 
Cibber, was not exactly one of the charms of Mrs. Oldfield,) 
the supposition, we think, falls to the ground. We need 
have less hesitation in admitting that Steele, who knew her 
well, alludes to her in another paper under her favourite title 
of Lady Betty Modish. Speaking of the effects of love upon 
a generous temper, in refining the manners, he says, " There 
is Colonel Ranter, who never spoke without an oath until he 
saw the Lady Betty Modish, now never gives his man an 
order, but it is, ' Pray, Tom, do it.' The drawers where he 
drinks live in perfect happiness. He asked Will at the 
George the other day, how he did ? Where he used to say, 
' Damn it, it is so ; ' he now c believes there is some mistake ; 
he must confess, he is of another opinion ; but, however, he 
will not insist.' " * This Colonel Ranter is supposed by the 
commentators to. have been Brigadier- General Churchill, one 
of the Marlborough family, who lived with Mrs. Oldfield 
after the death of Mr. Maynwaring. Steele elsewhere speaks 
of a" General" (supposed to be the same) " weeping for her, 
in the character of Indiana in his ' Conscious Lovers ; ' " upon 
which he said Mr. Wilks observed (for he had made all the 
fine gentlemen tender) that the General " would fight ne'er 
the worse for that." 

Mrs. Oldfield's position in life was singular. With all her 
beauty and attraction, and the license of stage manners, she 
is understood to have attached herself but to two persons 
successively, and on the footing of a wife. The first was 
Mr. Maynwaring, a celebrated Whig writer, to whom one of 
the volumes of " The Spectator" is dedicated, and by whom 
she had a son ; and, after his death, she lived with General 
Churchill, by whom she had a son also. " She left," says 
' The General Biography] " the bulk of her substance to her 
son Maynwaring, from whose father she had received it ; 
* Tatler, No. 10. 



290 MBS. OLDFIELD. 

without neglecting, however, her other son Churchill, and her 
own relations." 

During the period of these two connections, Mrs. Oldfield 
appears to have been received into the first circles, where she 
is described as being a pattern of good behaviour ; and yet 
the feeling of Mr. Maynwaring's friends against the connection 
was so strong, that she herself, though she is understood to 
have had a sincere affection for him, is said to have often 
remonstrated with him against it as injurious to his interest. 
Marriage with an actress, though the example had been set 
by a duke, appears in neither case to have been thought of. 
The feeling of society seems to have been this : — " Here is a 
woman bred up to the stage, and passing her life upon it. It 
is therefore impossible she should marry a gentleman of 
family ; and yet, as her behaviour would otherwise deserve 
it, and the examples of actresses are of no authority for any 
one but themselves, some license may be allowed to a woman 
who diverts us so agreeably, who attracts the society of the 
wits, and is so capital a dresser. We will treat her pro- 
fession with contempt, but herself with consideration." Upon 
these curious grounds Mrs. Oldfield lived in every respect 
like a woman of fashion, and as she became rich (which was, 
perhaps, not the least of her recommendations), she was 
admitted into the best society, and went to court. The 
pretence among her visitors during both *her connections 
probably was, that she was privately married ; but she was 
too sincere to warrant the deception. The Princess of Wales 
(afterwards queen of George II.) asked her one day at a levee 
if her marriage with General Churchill was true. " So it is 
said, may it please your highness, but w r e have not owned it 
yet." — " It may appear singular," says Mr. Chalmers, who 
tells us this story, " to quote the late pious Sir James Ston- 
house for anecdotes of Mrs. Oldfield ; yet in one of his letters 
we are informed, that she always went to the house in the 
same dress she had worn at dinner in her visits to the houses 
of great people ; for she was much caressed on account of 
her professional merit and her connection with Mr. Churchill, 
the Duke of Marlborough's brother ; that she used to go to 
the playhouse in a chair, attended by two footmen ; that she 
seldom spoke to any one of the actors ; and was allowed a 
sum of money to buy her own clothes."* Mrs. Oldfield's 

* Letters from the Rev. J. Orton and the Rev. Sir John Stonhouee, 
quoted in the " General Biographical Dictionary," vol. xxiii. p. 326. 



MRS. OLDFIELD. 2Vl 

generosity was much admired in giving a pension to Savage, 
which he received regularly as long as she lived. This is 
what has given posterity a liking for her. When she died 
she lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and her funeral in 
Westminster Abbey was attended by several noblemen, among 
others, as pall-bearers. Mr. Chalmers has repeated, with 
other biographers, that, " at her own desire," she was elegantly 
dressed in her coffin ; on which account, it is added, Pope 
introduced her in the character of Narcissa : 

" Odious ! in wollen ! 'twould a saint provoke, 
(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke) ; 
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace 
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face : 
One would not sure be frightful when one's dead — 
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red." 

But it does not appear that there is any authority for this 
speech, except the poet's. A letter written to her first 
biographer by an attendant during her last illness says, that 
" although she had no priest," she " prayed without ceasing," 
which does not look like an attention to dress ; but the 
biographer adds, that " as the nicety of dress was her delight 
when living, she was as nicely dressed after her decease ; 
being, by Mrs. Saunders' direction, thus laid in her coffin." 
The nicety here mentioned was, to be sure, " mortal fine." — 
" She had on," says the writer, " a very fine Brussels lace- 
head, a Holland shift with tucker, and double ruffles of the 
same lace ; a pair of new kid gloves, and her body, wrapt up 
in a winding sheet."* Yet we are of Montaigne's opinion, 
and know not why death should be rendered more melancholy 
than it is. When a tomb was opened in Greece, supposed to 
be that of Aspasia, there was found in it a sprig of myrtle in 
gold. 

The next batch of players, with Garrick at their head, are 
Quin, Macklin, Barry, King, Woodward, Gentleman Smith, 
and others ; with Mrs. Clive, Pritchard, Cibber, and Woffing- 
ton. Garrick's later contemporaries are Parsons, Dodd, Quick, 
the Palmers, Miss Pope, Mrs. Abingdon, and others, who 
bring us down to Mrs. Siddons, Miss Farren, &c, the com- 
mencers of our own time. Of Steele and the sentimental 
comedy we need say no more. Goldsmith belongs to Covenfc 
Garden ; Foote to the Hay market ; and Cumberland, though 
an elegant writer, does not call for any particular mention in 
an abstract like this. 

'* Memoirs, p. 144. 

v 2 



292 GARRICK AND HIS NEW STYLE. 

When Garrick first appeared, a declamatory grandeur 
prevailed in tragedy, which we conceive to have arisen in the 
time of Charles II. It was probably handed down by Booth ; 
and imitated, with the usual deterioration, from Betterton, 
who, though a true genius and a universal one, may not have 
been uncorrupted by the taste of the times ; not to mention 
that it is doubtful, till Garrick appeared, whether the art of 
acting was not identified with something too much of an art, 
and the delicacy of verses expected to partake more of reci- 
tation and musical accompaniment than we now look for. 
Our suspicion to this effect arises from the traditional habits 
of the stage, one generation handing down the manner of 
another, and Betterton himself having been educated in the 
school of those who were bred up in the recollection of Bur- 
bage and Condell. Shakspeare himself, from custom, or even 
from some subtlety of reason, might have approved of some- 
thing of this kind ; though, on the other hand, in the cele- 
brated directions of Hamlet to the players, there appears to 
be a secret dissatisfaction with the most applauded actors of 
that time, as not being exactly what was desirable. If this 
notion is just, and the great poet of nature was as much 
advanced beyond his time in this as in other respects, he 
might indeed have hailed such an actor as Garrick, however 
hyperbolically they have been sometimes put together. The 
best performers whom Garrick found in possession of public 
applause, though some of them are described as excelling in 
all the varieties of passion (as Mrs. Cibber, for instance, not- 
withstanding the different impression given of her in the fol- 
lowing quotation), appear to have been more or less of the 
old declamatory school. Quin in particular, then at the head 
of the profession, was an avowed declaimer, having the same 
notions of tragedy in the delivery which his friend Thomson 
had in the composition. Posterity respects Quin as the 
friend of Thomson, and laughs with him as an epicure and a 
wit. Garrick- and he ultimately became friends. Of the 
first reception of the new style introduced by Garrick, its 
electrical effects upon some, and the natural hesitation of 
others to give up their old favourites, a lively picture has 
been left us by Cumberland. 

Speaking of himself, who was then at Westminster school, 

ho S2JS,« — 

"I was once or twice allowed to go, under proper convoy, to the 
play, wh';re, for the first time in my life, I was treated by the sight 



Cumberland's account of garrick:. 293 

of Garrick in the character of Lothario. Quin played Horatio; Ryan, 
Altaniont; Mrs. Cibber, Calista; and Mrs. Pritchard condescended 
to the humble part of Lavinia. I enjoyed a good view of the stage 
from the front row of the gallery, and my attention was rivetted to 
the scene. I have the spectacle even now, as it were, before my eyes. 
Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green 
velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed 
periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With 
very little variation of cadence, and in a deep, full tone, accompanied 
by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the 
stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference, 
that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. 
Mrs. Cibber, in a key high pitched, but sweet withal, sung, or rather 
recitatived, Rowe's harmonious strain, something in the manner of 
the improvisatore's; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that, 
though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it ; when she had once 
recited two or three/speeches, I could anticipate the manner of every 
succeeding one; it was like a long, old, legendary ballad of innumer- 
able stanzas, every one of which is sung to the same tune, eternally 
chiming in the ear without variation or relief. Mrs. Pritchard was an 
actress of a different cast, had more nature, and, of course, more 
change of tone, and variety both of action and expression: in my 
opinion the comparison was decidedly in her favour; but when, after 
long and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young 
and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature, come bound- 
ing on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy- 
paced Horatio — heavens, what a transition ! — it seemed as if a whole 
century had been swept over in the transition of a single scene; old 
things were done away and a new order at once brought forward, 
bright and luminous, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms 
and bigotry of a tasteless age, too long attached to the prejudices of 
custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing 
declamation. This heaven-born actor was then struggling to eman- 
cipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to; and 
though, at times, he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of new- 
born light upon them, yet, in general they seemed to love darkness 
better than light, and, in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio 
and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master 
of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, 
my feelings in. those moments led me right; they were those of 
nature, and therefore could not err." * 

* Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, written by himself, 4to. p. 59. 
Davies, in his " Life of Garrick," vol. i. p. 136, gives us a different 
idea of the preference awarded by the audience. To be sure, upon his 
knowledge, he says only that Quin was defeated " in the opinion of 
the best judges; " but he adds, from report, an anecdote that looks as 
if the general feeling also was against him. "When Lothario," he 
says, " gave Horatio the challenge, Quin, instead of accepting it 
instantaneously, with the determined and unembarrassed brow of 
superior bravery, made a long pause, and dragged out the words, 

' I '11 meet thee there ! ' 
in such a manner as to make it appear absolutely ludicrous, lie 



294 IMPROVEMENT OF STAGE COSTUME. 

It is needless to add that Garrick excelled in comedy as 
well as tragedy, and in the lowest comedy too — in Abel 
Drugger as well as Hamlet. He was first at Goodman's 
Fields ; then appeared both at Covent Garden and Drury 
Lane; but in a short time settled for life at Drury Lane as 
actor, manager, and author. He was a sprightly dramatist, 
a man of wit, and no doubt a generous man, though the 
endless matters of business in which he was concerned, and 
the refusals of all kinds which he must have been often 
forced into, got him, with many, a character for the reverse. 
Johnson, who did not spare him, pronounced him generous. 
Fine as his tragedy must have been, we suspect his comedy 
must have been finer; because his own nature w r as one of 
greater sprightliness than sentiment. We hear nothing 
serious of him throughout his life; and his face, with a great 
deal of acuteness, has nothing in it profound or romantic. 

Garrick has the reputation of improving the stage costume: 
but it was Macklin that did it. The late Mr. West, who was 
the first (in his picture of the " Death of Wolfe ") to omit the 
absurdity of putting a piece of armour instead of a waistcoat 
upon a general officer, told us, that he himself once asked 
Garrick why he did not reform the stage in that particular. 
Garrick said the spectators would not allow it ; " they would 
throw a bottle at his head." Macklin, however, persevered, 
and the thing was done. The other, with all his nature, 
seems to have had a hankering after the old dresses. He had 
first triumphed in them, and they suited his propensity to the 
airy and popular. Garrick had a particular dislike to 
appearing in the Roman costume. Probably in this there 
was a consciousness of his small person. There are many 
engravings of him extant, in which his tragic characters are 
seen in coats and toupees. His appearance as Hotspur, in a 
laced frock and Ramillie wig, was objected to, not as being 
unsuitable to the time, but as " too insignificant for the 
character." * 

Of Barry, the most celebrated antagonist of Garrick, we 
shall speak at Covent Garden. King, according to Churchill, 
by the force of natural impudence as well as genius, excelled 
in "Brass; " and Churchill's opinions are worth attending to, 

paused so long before he spoke, that somebody, it was said, called out 
from the gallery, ' Why don't you tell the gentleman whether you 
will meet him or not ? '" 

* Davis's Miscellanies, ut supra, vol. i., p. 120. 



MRS. WOFFINGTON AND GARRICK. 295 

though he expresses them with vehemence, and by wholesale. 
Gentleman Smith explains his character by his title. We 
should entertain a very high opinion of Mrs. Pritchard, even 
had she left us nothing but the face in her portraits. She 
seems to have been a really great genius, equally capable of 
the highest and lowest parts. The fault objected to her was, 
that her figure was not genteel ; and we can imagine this well 
enough in an actress who could pass from Lady Macbeth to 
Doll Common. She seems to have thrown herself into the 
arms of sincerity and passion, not, perhaps, the most refined, 
but as tragic and comic as need be. As Churchill says, 

"Before such merits all objections fly, 
Pritchard 's genteel, and Garrick six feet high." 

Clive was an admirable comic actress, of the wilful and 
fantastic order, and a wit and virago in private life. She 
became the neighbour and intimate of Horace Walpole, and 
always seems to us to have been the man of the two. Mrs. 
Woffington was an actress of all work, but of greater talents 
than the phrase generally implies. Davies says she was the 
handsomest woman that ever appeared on the stage, and that 
Garrick was at one time in doubt whether he should not 
marry her. She was famous for performing in male attire, 
and openly preferred the conversation of men to women — the 
latter she said, talking of " nothing but silks and scandal." 
She was the only woman admitted into one of the beef-steak 
clubs, and is said to have been president of it. These 
humours, perhaps, though Davies praises her for feminine 
manners, as contrasted with her antagonist Mrs. Clive, 
frightened G-arrick out of his matrimony. 

We now pass at once to Covent Garden Theatre, which 
lies close by. Many old play -goers who are in the habit of 
associating the two theatres in their fancy, like twins, will be 
surprised to hear that the Covent Garden establishment is 
very young, compared with her sister, being little more than 
a hundred years old. It was first built by Eich, the harlequin, 
and opened in 1733 under the patent granted to the Duke's 
company. The Covent Garden company may therefore be 
considered as the representatives of the old companies of 
Davenant and Betterton ; while those at Drury Lane are the 
successors of Killigrew, and more emphatically the King's 
actors. Indeed, they exclusively designate themselves as " his 
Majesty's servants ; " and, we believe, claim some privileges 
on that account. Covent Garden theatre was partly rebuilt 



296 COVENT GARDEN THEATRE. 

in 1772, and wholly so in 1809, having undergone the usual 
death by conflagration. The new edifice was a structure in 
classical taste, by Mr. Smirke, the portico being a copy from 
the Parthenon of Athens.* 

Actors have seldom been confined to any one house ; and 
those whom we are about to mention performed at Drury 
Lane as well as Covent Garden ; but as they were rivals or 
opponents of Garrick, and may be supposed to have made the 
greatest efforts when they acted on a different stage, we shall 
speak of them apart under the present head. The first of 
them is Barry, who at one time almost divided the favour of 
of the town with Garrick, and in some characters is said to 
have excelled him, especially in love parts. How far this 
was owing to superiority of figure, and to a reputation for 
gallantry, it is impossible to say; and never were judgments 
more discordant than those which have been left us on the 
subject of Barry's merits. For instance, his character is thus 
summed up by Davies : — 

" Of all the tragic actors who have trod the English stage for these 
last fifty years, Mr. Barry was unquestionably the most pleasing. 
Since Booth and Wilks, no actor had shown the public a just idea of 
the hero or the lover; Barry gave dignity to the one and passion to 
the other: in his person he was tall without awkwardness; in his 
countenance, handsome without effeminacy; in his uttering of passion, 
the language of nature alone was communicated to the feelings of an 
audience." 

Davies proceeds to tell us, that Barry could not perform 
such characters as Eichard and Macbeth, though he made a 
capital Alexander. " He charmed the ladies by the soft 
melody of his love-complaints, and the noble ardour of his 
courtship. There was no passion of the tender kind so truly 
pathetic and forcible in any actor as in Barry, except in Mrs. 
Cibber, who, indeed, excelled, in the expression of love, grief, 
tenderness, and jealous rage, all I ever knew. Happy it was 
for the frequenters of the theatre, when these two genuine 
children of nature united their efforts to charm an attentive 
audience. Mrs. Cibber, indeed, might be styled the daughter 
or sister of Mr. Garrick, but could be only the mistress or 
wife of Barry." f Our author afterwards calls him the 

* Since this was written, Covent Garden has been converted into an 
Italian Opera House, has been a second time burnt, and a third time 
rebuilt; the architect being Mr. Barry, a son of Sir Charles Barry, 
who designed and erected the New Houses of Parliament. 

f Alluding to her performance of Cordelia, &c, with the one, and 
of Juliet, Belvidera, &c, with the other. 



CHARACTER OF BARRY THE ACTOR. 297 

" Mark Antony of the stage," whether his amorous disposition 
was considered, or his love of expense. He delighted in giving 
magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr. Pelham, who 
once invited himself to sup with him, in a style so princely, 
that the Minister rebuked him for it ; which was not very 
civil. An actor has surely as much right to do absurd things 
as a statesman. 

Now, as a contrast to this romantic portrait by Davies, 
take the following from the severer but masterly hand of 
Churchill:— 

" In person taller than the common size, 
Behold where Barry draws admiring eyes; 
When lab'ring passions in his bosom pent, 
Convulsive rage, and struggling heave for vent, 
Spectators, with imagined terrors warm, 
Anxious expect the bursting of the storm: 
But, all unfit in such a pile to dwell, 
His voice comes forth like Echo from her cell; 
To swell the tempest needful aid denies, 
And all a-down the stage in feeble murmur dies. 
What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err 
In elocution, action, character ? 
What man could give, if Barry was not here, 
Such well-applauded tenderness to Lear ? 
Who else can speak so very, very fine, 
That sense may kindly end with every line ? 
Some dozen lines, before the ghost is there, 
Behold him for the solemn scene prepare. 
See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb, 
Puts the whole body into proper trim, — 
From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art, 
Five lines hence comes a ghost, and lo ! a start. 
When he appears most perfect, still we find 
Something which jars upon and hurts the mind. 
Whatever lights upon a part are thrown, 
We see too plainly they are not his own : 
No flame from nature ever yet he caught, 
Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught; 
He raised his trophies on the base of art, 
And conn'd his passions, as he conn'd his part."* 

The probability, we fear, is that Barry was one of the old 
artificial school, who made his way more by person than by 
genius. Davies, who was a better gossip than critic, though 
he affected literature, was an actor himself of the mouthing 
order, if we are to believe Churchill ; and his criticisms show 
him enough inclined to lean favourably to that side. 

We have spoken of Quin, who acted much at this house in 
Opposition to Garrick, It was here that he delivered the pro- 

* The Kosciad. 



298 PANTOMIME. 

logue to the memory of his friend Thomson; and affected the 
audience by shedding real tears.* 

Macklin was celebrated in Shylock; and in some other 
sarcastic parts, particularly that of Sir Archy, in his comedy 
of " Love-a-la-Mode." We take him to have been one of 
those actors whose performances are confined to the reflection 
of their own personal peculiarities. The merits of Shuter, 
Edwin, Quick, and others who succeeded one another as 
buffoons, were perhaps a good deal of this sort; but pleasant 
humours are rare and acceptable. Macklin was a clever 
satirist in his writing, and embroiled himself, not so cleverly, 
with a variety of his acquaintances. He foolishly attempted 
to run down Garrick; and once, in a sudden quarrel, poked 
out a man's eye with his stick and killed him ; for which he 
narrowly escaped hanging. However, he was sorry for it; 
and he*is spoken of, by the stage historians, as kind in his 
private relations, and liberal of his purse. A curious speci- 
men of his latter moments we reserve for our mention of the 
house where he died. 

Woodward seems to have been a caricature anticipation of 
Lewis, and was a capital harlequin. But nobody in harlequins 
beat Rich, the manager of this theatre. His pantomimes and 
spectacles produced a re-action against Garrick, when nothing 
else could; and Covent Garden ever since has been reckoned 
the superior house in that kind of merit, — "the wit," as Mr. 
Ludlow Holt called it, " of goods and chattels." However, a 
considerable degree of fancy and observation maybe developed 
in patomime : it is the triumph of animal spirits at Christmas, 
for the little children ; and for the men there is occasionally 
some excellent satire on the times, reminding one, in its 
spirit, of what we read of the comic buffoonery of the 
ancients. Grimaldi, in his broad and fugitive sketches, often 
showed himself a shrewder observer than many a comic actor 
who can repeat only what is set down for him. Covent Garden 
has, perhaps, been superior also in music, at least since 

* " He (Thomson) left behind him the tragedy of ' Coriolamis,' 
which was, by the zeal of his patron, Sir George Lyttleton, brought 
upon the stage for the benefit of his family, and recommended by a 
prologue, which Quin, who had long lived with Thomsom in fond 
intimacy, spoke in such a manner as showed him 'to be,' on that 
occasion, ' no actor.' The commencement of this benevolence is very 
honourable to Quin ; who is reported to have delivered Thomson, 
then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest, by a very 
considerable present; and its continuance is honourable to both; for 
friendship is not always the sequel of obligation." Life, by Dr. 
Johnson, in Chalmers's ' Poets,' p. 409. 



COOKE. — KEMBLE. 299 

the existence of the two houses together: for Purcell was 
before its time. Many of Arne's pieces came out here ; and 
the famous Beard, a singer as manly as his name, the delight 
both of public and private life, was one of the managers. 

Among the Covent Garden actors must not be forgotten 
Cooke, who came out there in Eichard III. For some time he 
was the greatest performer of this and a few other characters. 
He was a new kind of Macklin, and like him, excelled in 
Shylock and Sir Archy M* Sarcasm; a confined actor, and a 
wayward man, but highly impressive in what he could do. 
His artful villains have been found fault with for looking too 
artful and villanous ; but men of that stamp are apt to look 
so. The art of hiding is a considerable one ; but habit will 
betray it after all, and stand foremost in the countenance. 
They who think otherwise are only too dull to see it. Besides, 
Cooke had generally to represent bold-faced, aspiring art; and 
to hug himself in its triumph. This he did with such a 
gloating countenance, as if villany was pure luxury in him, 
and with such a soft inward retreating of his voice — a wrap- 
ping up of himself, as it were, in velvet — so different from 
his ordinary rough way, that sometimes one could almost 
have wished to abuse him. 

John Kemble, who, like the whole respectable family of 
that name, contributed much to maintain the rising character 
of the profession, may be considered the last popular actor of 
the declamatory school. His sister was a far greater per- 
former, a true theatrical genius, especially for the stately and 
dominant; and had a great effect in raising the character of 
the profession. The growth of liberal opinion is nowhere 
more visible than in the different estimation in which actors 
and actresses are now held, compared with what it was. 
Individuals, it is true, always made their way into society by 
dint of the interest they excited; but still they were upon 
sufferance. Anybody could insult an actor, could even beat 
him-, without its being dreamt that he had a right to retaliate; 
and the most amiable and lady-like actresses were thought 
unfit for wives, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Oldfield. 
Things are now upon a different footing. Talent is allowed 
its just pretensions, whether coming from author or per- 
former, and actresses have taken such a step, in ascension, 
that nobility almost seems to look out for a wife among 
them, as in a school that will inevitably furnish it with some 
kind of grace and intellect. The famous Lord Peterborough, 
who was the first nobleman that married an actress, kept the 



300 RISE OF ACTORS IN SOCIAL RANK. 

iniioii concealed as long as he could, and only owned it just 
before his death. The Duke of Bolton, who married Miss 
Fenton, the Polly of Gay's opera, had first had several 
children by her as his mistress; so that this is hardly a 
case in point; and the marriage of Beard, the singer, with 
a lady of the Waldegrave family, though he was one of the 
most excellent of men, was looked upon as such a degrada- 
tion, that they have contrived to omit the circumstance in 
the peerage-books to this day ! Martin Folkes's marriage 
with Mrs. Bradshaw probably made the world consider the 
case a little more rationally, as he was a clever man; but 
Lord Derby's marriage with Miss Farren, who was eminently 
the gentlewoman, as well as of spotless character, seems to 
have been the first that rendered such unions compatible with 
public opinion. Lord Craven's with Miss Brunton followed, 
though at a considerable interval; and since that time, the 
town are so far from being surprised at the marriages of 
.actresses with people of rank or fashion, that they seem to 
look for them. Lord Thurlow, not long afterwards, married 
Miss Bolton; another noble lord was lately the husband of an 
eminent singer; and several other favourites of the town, 
Miss Tree, Miss O'Neill, &c, have become the wives of men 
of fortune. We remember even a dancer, Miss Searle (but 
she was of great elegance, and had an air of delicate self- 
possession), who married into a family of rank. 

The whole entertainmeut of a theatre has been rising in 
point of accommodation and propriety for the last fifty 
years. The scenery is better, the music better — we mean 
the orchestra — and last, not least, the audiences are better. 
They are better behaved. Garrick put an end to one great 
nuisance — the occupation, by the audience, of part of the 
stage. Till his time, people often sat about a stage as at 
the sides of a room, and the actor had to make his way 
among them, sometimes with the chance of being insulted ; 
and scuffles took place among themselves. Dr. Johnson, at 
Lichfield, is said to have pushed a man into the orchestra 
who had taken possession of his chair. The pit, also, from 
about Garrick's time, seems to have left to the galleries the vul- 
garity attributed to it by Pope. There still remains, says he— 



to mortify a wit, 



The many-headed monster of the pit, 
A senseless, worthless, and unhonoured crowd, 
Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud, 
Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke. 
Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke,' 1 



DR. JOHNSON AT THE THEATRE. 301 

This would now be hardly a fair description of the galleries ; 
and yet modern audiences are not reckoned to be of quite so 
high a cast as they used, in point of rank and wealth; so 
that this is another evidence of the general improvement of 
manners. Boswell, in an ebullition of vivacity, while sitting 
one night in the pit by his friend Dr. Blair, gave an extem- 
pore imitation of a cow ! The house applauded, and he 
ventured upon some attempts of the same kind which did not 
succeed. Blair advised him in future to " stick to the cow." 
No gentleman now-a-days would think of a freak like this. 
There is one thing, however, in which the pit have much to 
amend. Their destitution of gallantry is extraordinary, espe- 
cially for a body so ready to accept the clap-traps of the 
stage, in praise of their " manly hearts," and their " guardian- 
ship of the fair." Nothing is more common than to see 
women standing at the sides of the pit benches, while no one 
thinks of offering them a seat. Eoom even is not made, 
though it often might be. Nay, we have heard women 
rebuked for coming without securing a seat, while the re- 
prover complimented himself on his better wisdom, and the 
hearers laughed. On the other hand, a considerate gentleman 
one night, who went out to stretch his legs, told a lady in our 
hearing that she might occupy his seat " till he returned !" 

A friend of ours knew a lady who remembered Dr. Johnson 
in the pit taking snuff out of his waistcoat pocket. He used 
to go into the green-room to his friend Garrick, till he honestly 
confessed that the actresses excited too much of his admira- 
tion. Garrick did not much like to be seen by him when 
playing any buffoonery. It is said that the actor once com- 
plained to his friend that he talked too loud in the stage box, 
and interrupted his feelings : upon which the doctor said, 
" Feelings ! Punch has no feelings." It was Johnson's 
opinion (speaking of a common cant of critics), that an actor 
who really " took himself" for Eichard III., deserved to be 
hanged; and it is easy enough to agree with him; except 
that an actor who did so would be out of his senses. Too 
great a sensibility seems almost as hurtful to acting as too 
little. It would soon wear out the performer. There must 
be a quickness of conception, sufficient to seize the truth of 
the character, with a coolness of judgment to take all advan- 
tages; but as the actor is to represent as well as conceive, 
and to be the character in his own person, he could not with 
impunity give way to his emotions in any degree equal to 
what the spectators suppose. At least, if he did, he would 



302 CHURCHILL. 

fall into fits, or run his head against the wall. As to the 
amount of talent requisite to make a great actor, we must not 
enter upon a discussion which would lead us too far from our 
main object; but we shall merely express our opinion, that 
there is a great deal more of it among the community than 
they are aware. 

Goldsmith was a frequenter of the theatre : Fielding and 
Smollett, Sterne, but particularly Churchill. " His obser- 
vatory," says Davies, " was generally the first row of the pit, 
next the orchestra." His " Eosciad," a criticism on the most 
known performers of the day, made a great sensation among 
a body of persons who, as they are in the habit of receiving 
applause to their faces, and in the most victorious manner, 
may be allowed a greater stock of self-love than most people 
— a circumstance which renders an unexacting member of 
their profession doubly delightful. " The writer," says Davies, 
" very warmly, as well as justly, celebrated the various and 
peculiar excellencies of Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Cibber, and Clive; 
but no one has, except Garrick, escaped his satirical lash." 
Poor Davies is glad to say this, because of the well-known 
passage in which he himself is mentioned : — 

a With him came mighty Davies ! On my life 
That Davies hath a very pretty wife." 

We will make one more quotation from this poem, because 
it describes a class of actors, who are now extinct, and who 
carried the artificial school to its height : — 
" Mossop, attached to military plan, 

Still kept his eye fixed on his right-hand man. 

Whilst the mouth measures words with seeming skill, 

The right hand labours, and the left lies still; 

Por he resolved on scripture grounds to go, 

What the right doth, the left hand shall not know. 

With studied impropriety of speech, 

He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach; 

To epithets allots emphatic state, 

Whilst principals, ungraced, like lackeys, wait; 

In ways first trodden by himself excels, 

And stands alone in indeclinables; 

Conjunction, preposition, adverb join, 

To stamp new vigour on the nervous line: 

In monosyllables his thunders roll; 

He, she, it, and we, ye, thet, fright the soul." 

Mr. Barrymore (of whom we have no unpleasing recollec- 
tion) had something of this manner with him; but the extre- 
mity of the style is now quite gone out. 

The only capital performers we remember, that are now 
dead and gone, with the exception of two or three already 



MRS. JORDAN AND MR. SUETT. 303 

mentioned, were Mrs. Jordan, a charming cordial actress, on 
the homely side of the agreeable, with a delightful voice ; 
and Suett, who was the very personification of weak whim- 
sicality, with a laugh like a peal of giggles. Mathews gives 
him. to the life. 

We shall "conclude this chapter with some delightful play- 
going recollections of the best theatrical critic now living * — 
the best, indeed, as far as we know, that this country ever 
saw. He is one who does not respect criticism a jot too 
much, nor any of the feelings connected with humanity, or 
the imitation of it, too little. We here have him giving us 
an account of the impression made upon him by the first 
sight of a play, and concluding with a good hint to those older 
children, who, because they have cut their drums open, 
think nothing remains in life to be pleased with. A child 
may like a theatre, because he is not thoroughly acquainted 
with it ; but if he beeome a wise man, he will find reason to 
like it, because he is. 

Life always flows with a certain freshness in these quarters ; 
nor, with all their drawbacks, have we more agreeable impres- 
sions from any neighbourhood in London, than what we receive 
from the district containing the great theatres. It is one of 
the most social and the least sordid. 

" At the north end of Cross Court," says Mr. Lamb, " thsre yet 
stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to 
humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. 
This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know- 
was the identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all 
of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years 
from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed 
through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and 
the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that 
the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch 
from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was 
taught to prognosticate the desired cessation. I seem to remember 
the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it. 
***** 

" In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable 
manager who abolished them! — with one of these we went. I 
remember the waiting at the door — not that which is left — but 
between that and an inner door, in shelter. Oh, when shall I be 
such an expectant again! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indispen- 
sable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as I can 
recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses 
was, * chase some oranges, chase some nonpareils, chase a bill of the 
play: ' chase pro chuse. But when we got in and I beheld the green 

* Alas! now dead. This passage was written before the departure 
of our admirable friend. 



304 EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF A PLAY-GOER. 

curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to 
be disclosed — the breathless anticipations I endured! I had seen 
something like it in the plate prefixed to ' Troilus and Cressida,' in 
Rowe's ' Shakspeare,' — the tent scene with Diomede; and a sight of 
that plate can always bring back, in a measure, the feeling of that 
evening. The boxes at that time full of well-dressed women of qua- 
lity, projected over the pit; and the pilasters, reaching down, were 
adorned with a glittering substance (I know not what) under glass 
(as it seemed), resembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be 
sugar-candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier 
qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! The orchestra lights at 
length arose, those ' fair Auroras ! ' Once the bell sounded. It was 
to ring out yet once again; and, incapable of the anticipation, I 
reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. 
It rang the second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six 
years old — and the play was ' Artaxerxes ! ' 

"I had dabbled a little in the ' Universal History ' — the ancient 
part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It was bekig admitted 
to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going 
on, for I understood not its import ; but I heard the word Darius* 
and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. 
Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princes, passed before me — I knew 
not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol 
of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe- 
struck, and believed those significations to be something more than 
elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such 
pleasure has ever since visited me but in dreams. Harlequin's inva- 
sion followed ; where, I remember, the transformation of the magis- 
trates into reverend beldames seemed to me a piece of grave historic 
justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity 
as the legend of St. Denys. 

" The next play to which I was taken, was the ' Lady of the Manor/ 
of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are 
left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime called ' Lun's 
Ghost ' — a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead 
— but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire) Lun was as remote a 
piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of harlequins — trans- 
mitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless 
ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in 
a ghastly vest of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead 
rainbow. So harlequins (thought 1) look when they are dead. 

" My third play followed in quick succession. It was ' The Way 
of the World.' I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, 
I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected 
me like some solemn tragic passion. ' Robinson Crusoe ' followed, 
in which Crusoe, Man Friday, and the Parrot were as good and 
authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe I no more 
laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed 
to laugh at the grotesque gothic heads (seeming to me then replete 
with devout meaning) that gape and grin, in stone, around the inside 
of the old round church (my church) of the Templars. 

"I saw these plays in the season of 1781-2, when I was from six to 
seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven years (for at 
school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a 



EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF A PLAY-GOER. 



305 



theatre. That old Artaxerxes' evening had never done ringing in 
my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same 
occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than 
the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost ! At 
the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated 
nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 

1 Was nourished I could not tell how.' 
I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The 
same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reverence 
was gone ! The green curtain was no longer a veil drawn between 
two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to 
present a 'royal ghost,' but a certain quantity of green baize, which 
was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their 
fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The 
lights — the orchestra lights — came up, a clumsy machinery. The first 
ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell, 
which had been like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no 
hand seen or guessed at, which ministered to its warning. The 
actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in 
them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many 
centuries — of six short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. Perhaps 
it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an 
indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable 
expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emo- 
tions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first 
appearance, to me, of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and 
retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and 
the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of 
recreations." — Elia, p. 221. 




ENTRANCE DOOR, OLD COVENT GARDEN. 



306 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OOVENT GARDEN CONTINUED AND LEICESTER SQUARE. 

Bow Street once the Bond Street of London — Fashions at that time — 
Infamous frolic of Sir Charles Sedley and others — Wycherly and 
the Countess of Drogheda — Ton son the Bookseller — Fielding — 
Russell Street — Dry den beaten by hired ruffians in Rose Street — 
His Presidency at Will's Coffee-House — Character of that Place — 
Addison and Button's Coffee-House — Pope, Philips, and Garth — 
Armstrong — BoswelTs introduction to Johnson — The Hummums — 
Ghost Story there — Covent Garden — The Church — Car, Earl of 
Somerset — Butler, Southern, Eastcourt, Sir Robert Strange — 
Macklin — Curious Dialogue with him when past a century — 
Dr. Walcot — Covent Garden Market — Story of Lord Sandwich, 
Hackman, and Miss Ray — Henrietta Street — Mrs. Clive — James 
Street — Partridge, the almanack-maker — Mysterious lady — King 
Street — Arne and his Father — The four Indian Kings — 
Southampton Row — Maiden Lane — Voltaire — Long Acre and its 
Mug-Houses — Prior's resort there — Newport Street — St. Martin's 
Lane, and Leicester Square — Sir Joshua Reynolds — Hogarth — Sir 
Isaac Newton. 

0¥ STREET was once the Bond Street 
of London. Mrs. Bracegirdle began an 
epilogue of Dryden's with saying — 

"I've had to-day a dozen billet-doux 
From fops, and wits, and cits, and Bow- 
street beaux ; 
Some from Whitehall, but from the Temple 

more : 
A Covent-garden porter brought me four." 

Sir Walter Scott says, in a note on the passage, " With a 
slight alteration in spelling, a modern poet would have written 
Bond Street beaux. A billet-doux from Bow Street would 
now be more alarming than flattering."* 

Mrs. Bracegirdle spoke this epilogue at Drury Lane. 
There was no Covent Garden theatre then. People of fashion 
occupied the houses in Bow Sti-eet, and mantuas floated up 
and down the pavement. This was towards the end of the 
Stuart's reign, and the beginning of the next century — the 
times of Dry den, Wycherly, and the Spectator. The beau of 
Charles's time is well-known. He wore, when in full flower, 
a peruke to imitate the flowing locks of youth, a Spanish hat, 
clothes of slashed silk or velvet, the slashes tied with ribands, 
* Scott's 'Dryden,' vol. viii., p. 178, 






BOW STREET. 307 

a coat resembling a vest rather than the modern coat, and 
silk stockings, with roses in his shoes. The Spanish was 
afterwards changed for the cocked hat, the flowing peruke 
for one more compact ; the coat began to stiffen into the 
modern shape, and when in full dress, the beau wore his hat 
under his arm. His grimaces have been described by 
Dryden — 

"His various modes from various fathers follow; 

One taught the toss, and one the new Trench wallow; 

His sword-knot this, his cravat that designed; 

And this the yard-long snake that twirls behind. 

From one the sacred periwig he gained, 

Which wind ne'er blew, nor touch of hat profaned. 

Another's diving bow he did adore, 

Which with a shog casts all the hair before, 

Till he, with full decorum, brings it back, 

And rises with a water-spaniel shake." * 

One of these perukes would sometimes cost forty or fifty 
pounds. The fair sex at this time waxed and waned through 
all the varieties of dishabilles, hoop -petticoats, and stomachers. 
We must not enter upon this boundless sphere, especially as 
we have to treat upon it from time to time. We shall content 
ourselves with describing a set of lady's clothes, advertised as 
stolen in the year 1709, and which would appear to have 
belonged to a belle resolved to strike even Bow Street with 
astonishment. They consisted of <{ a black silk petticoat, 
with a red-and-white calico border; cherry-coloured stays, 
trimmed with blue and silver ; a red and dove-coloured 
damask gown, flowered with large trees ; a yellow satin apron, 
trimmed with white Persian; muslin head-cloths, with crow- 
foot edging ; double ruffles with fine edging ; a black silk 
furbelowed scarf, and a spotted hood!" if It is probable, 
however, the lady did not wear all these colours at once. 

A tavern in Bow Street, the Cock, became notorious for a 
frolic of Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Buckhurst, and others, 
frequently mentioned in the biographies, but too disgusting to 
be told. There was an account of it in Pepy's manuscript, 
but it was obliged to be omitted in the printing. Anthony a 
Wood found it out, and first gave it to the public. It was not 
commonly dissolute, there was a filthiness in it, which would 
have been incredible if told of any other period than that of 

* In the prologue to Etherege's play of the ' Man of Mode.' Scott's 
'Dryden,' vol. x., p. 340. 

I f Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century, 
vol. ii., p. 317. 

x 2 



308 WYCHERLY AND 

the fine gentlemen of the court of Charles. What can be 
repeated has been told by Johnson in his life of Sackville, 
Lord Dorset. 

*' Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles 
Sedley, and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, 
by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to 
the company in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew 
warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in 
such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened; 
the crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in 
the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. 
For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five 
hundred pounds; what was the sentence of the others is not known. 
Sedley employed Killegrew and another to procure a remission of the 
King, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine 
for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat." 

Opposite this tavern lived Wycherly, with his wife, the 
Countess of Drogheda. Charles paid him a visit there, before 
Wycherly knew the lady ; and showed him a kindness which 
his marriage is said to have interrupted. The story begins 
and ends with Bow Street, and, as far as concerns the lady, is 
curious. 

" Mr. Wycherly," says the biographer, " happened to be ill of a 
fever at his lodgings in Bow Street, Covent Garden: during his sick- 
ness, the King did him the honour of a visit: when, finding his fever 
indeed abated, but his body extremely weakened, and his spirits 
miserably shattered, he commanded him to take a journey to the 
south of France, believing that nothing could contribute more to the 
restoring his former state of health than the gentle air of Montpelier 
during the winter season : at the same time, the King assured him, 
that as soon as he was able to undertake the journey, he would order 
five hundred pounds to be paid him to defray the expenses of it. 

" Mr. Wycherly accordingly went to France, and returned to 
England the latter end of the spring following, with his health 
entirely restored. The King received him with the utmost marks of 
esteem, and shortly after told him he had a son, who he resolved 
should be educated like the son of a king, and that he could make 
choice of no man so proper to be his governor as Mr. Wycherly; and 
that, for this service, he should have fifteen hundred pounds a-year 
allotted to him; the King also added, that when the time came that 
his office should cease, he would take care to make such a provision 
for him as should set him above the malice of the world and fortune. 
These were golden prospects for Mr. Wycherly, but they were soon 
by a cross accident dashed to pieces. 

" Soon after this promise of his Majesty's, Mr. Dennis tells us that 
Mr. Wycherly went down to Tunbridge, to take either the benefit of 
the waters or the diversions of the place, when, walking one day 
upon the Wells-walk with his friend, Mr. Fairbeard, of Gray's Inn, 
just as he came up to the bookseller's, the Countess of Drogheda, a 
young widow, rich, noble, and beautiful, came up to the bookseller 



THE COUNTESS OP DROGHEDA. 309 

and inquired for the * Plain Dealer.' * Madam,' says Mr. Fairbeard, 
' since you are for the " Plain Dealer," there he is for you,' pushing 
Mr. Wycherly towards her. 'Yes,' says Mr. Wycherly, 'this lady 
can bear plain-dealing, for she appears to be so accomplished, that 
what would be a compliment to others, when said to her would be 
plain-dealing.' 'No, truly, sir,' said the lady, 'I am not without my 
faults more than the rest of my sex : and yet, notwithstanding all my 
faults, I love plain-dealing, and am never more fond of it than when 
it tells me of a fault.' ' Then, Madam,' says Mr. Fan-beard, " you 
and the plain dealer seem designed by heaven for each other.' In 
short, Mr. Wycherly accompanied her upon the walks, waited upon 
her home, visited her daily at her lodgings whilst she stayed at 
Tunbridge; and after she went to London, at her lodgings in Hatton 
Garden: where, in a little time, he obtained her consent to marry her. 
This he did, by his father's command, without acquainting the King ; 
for it was reasonably supposed, that the lady's having a great inde- 
pendent estate, and noble and powerful relations, the acquainting the 
King with the intended match would be the likeliest way to prevent 
it. As soon as the news was known at court, it was looked upon as 
an affront to the King, and a contempt of his Majesty's orders ; and 
Mr. Wycherly's conduct after marrying made the resentment fall 
heavier upon him : for being conscious he had given offence, and 
seldom going near the court, his absence was construed into in- 
gratitude. 

• " The Countess, though a splendid wife, was not formed to make a 
husband happy; she was in her nature extremely jealous; and 
indulged in it to such a degree, that she could not endure her husband 
should be one moment out of her sight. Their lodgings were in Bow 
Street, Co vent Garden, over against the Cock Tavern, whither, if 
Mr. Wycherly at any time went, he was obliged to leave the windows 
open, that his lady might see there was no woman in the company."* 

" The Countess," says another writer, "made him some amends 
by dying in a reasonable time." His title to her fortune, 
however, was disputed, and his circumstances, though he 
had property, were always constrained. He was rich enough 
however to marry a young woman a few days before he died, 
in order to disappoint a troublesome heir. In his old age he 
became acquainted with Pope, then a youth, who vexed him 
by taking him at his word, when asked to correct his poetry. 
Wycherly showed a candid horror at growing old, natural 
enough to a man who had been one of the gayest of the gay, 
very handsome, and a " Captain." He was captain in the 
regiment of which Buckingham was colonel. We have men- 
tioned the Duchess of Cleveland's visits to him when a student 
in the Temple. Wycherly is the greatest of all our comic 
dramatists for truth of detection in what is ill, as Congreve 
is the greatest painter of artificial life, and Farquhar and 

* Cibber's ' Lives of the Poets ' vol. iii., p. 252. 



310 TONSON, THE BOOKSELLER. 

Hoadley the best discoverers of what is pleasant and good- 
humoured. When the profligacy of writers like Wycherly is 
spoken of, we should not forget that much of it is not only 
confined to certain characters, but that the detection of these 
characters leaves an impression on the mind highly favour- 
able to genuine morals. A modern critic, as excellent in his 
remarks on the drama as the one quoted at the conclusion of 
our last chapter is upon the stage, says on this point, speaking 
of the comedy of the " Plain Dealer," — " The character of 
Manly is violent, repulsive, and uncouth, which is a fault, 
though one that seems to have been intended for the sake of 
contrast; for the portrait of consummate, artful hypocrisy 
in Olivia, is, perhaps., rendered more striking by it. The 
indignation excited against this odious and pernicious quality 
by the masterly exposure to which it is here subjected, is 
' a discipline, of humanity.' No one can read this play atten- 
tively without being the better for it as long as he lives. It 
penetrates to the core; it shows the immorality and hateful 
effects of duplicity, by showing it fixing its harpy fangs in 
the heart of an honest and worthy man. It is worth ten* 
volumes of sermons. The scenes between Manly, after his 
return, Olivia, Plausible, and Norel, are instructive examples 
of unblushing impudence, of shallow pretensions to principle, 
and of the most mortifying reflections on his own situation, 
and bitter sense of female injustice and ingratitude on the 
part of Manly. The devil of hypocrisy and hardened assu- 
rance seems worked up to the highest pitch of conceivable 
effrontery in Olivia, when, after confiding to her cousin 
the story of her infamy, she, in a moment, turns round upon 
her for some sudden purpose, and affecting not to know the 
meaning of the other's allusions to what she had just told her, 
reproaches her with forging insinuations to the prejudice of 
her character, and in violation of their friendship. ' Go ! 
you're a censorious woman.' This is more trying to the 
patience than anything in the Tartuffe." 

Tonson, the great bookseller of his time, had a private 
house in Bow Street. Rowe, in an amusing parody of Horace's 
dialogue with Lydia, has left an account of old Jacob's visitors 
here, and of his style of language. 

Tonson got rich, but he was penurious; and his want of 
generosity towards Dry den (to say the least of it) has done 
him no honour with posterity. It may be said that he cared 
little for posterity or for anything else, provided he got his 



TONSON, THE BOOKSELLER. 311 

money ; but a man who cares for money (unless he is a pure 
miser) only cares for power and consideration in another 
shape; and no man chooses to be disliked by his fellow- 
creatures, living, or to come. In the correspondence between 
Tonson and Dryden, we see the usual painful picture (when 
the bookseller is of this description) of the tradesman taking 
all the advantages, and the author made to suffer for being a 
gentleman and a man of delicacy. This is the common, and, 
perhaps, the natural order of things, till society see better 
throughout ; though there have been, and still are, some 
handsome exceptions, as in the instances of Dodsley, the late 
Mr. Johnson, and others. The bookseller generally behaves 
well, in proportion to his intelligence ; nothing being so eager 
to catch all petty advantages as the consciousness of having no 
other ground to go upon. It may be answered that Dryden's 
patience with Tonson sometimes got exhausted, and he became 
" captious and irritable:" and it is always to be remembered 
that the bookseller need not pretend to be anything more 
than a tradesman seeking his allowed profits ; but he should 
not on every occasion retreat into the strongholds of trade, 
and yet claim the merit of acting otherwise ; and Tonson, who 
undertook to be the familiar friend of Eowe and Congreve, 
ought not to have been able to insult the man whom they both 
respected, because he was not so well off as they. The fol- 
lowing passage of mingled amusement and painfulness is out 
of Sir Walter Scott:— 

" Dryden/' says Sir Walter, in his life of the poet, " seems to have 
been particularly affronted at a presumptuous plan of that publisher 
(a keen whig, and Secretary to the Kit-Cat Club) to drive him into 
inscribing the translation of 'Virgil' to King William. With this 
view Tonson had an especial care to make the engraver aggravate 
the nose of Eneas in the plates into a sufficient resemblance of the 
hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance, and foreseeing 
Dryden's repugnance to his favourite plan, he had recourse, it would 
seem, to more unjustifiable means to further it; for the poet expresses 
himself as convinced that, through Tonson's means, his correspondence 
with his sons, then at Kome, was intercepted. I suppose Jacob, 
having fairly laid siege to his author's conscience, had no scruple to 
intercept all foreign supplies, which might have confirmed him in his 
pertinacity. But Dryden, although thus closely beleagured, held fast 
his integrity; and no prospect of personal advantage, or importunity 
on the part of Tonson, could induce him to take a step inconsistent 
with his religious and political sentiments. It was probably during 
the course of these bickerings with his publisher, that Dryden, 
incensed at some refusal of accommodation on the part of Tonson, 



312 RUSSELL STREET. 

sent him three well-known coarse and forcible satirical lines descriptive 
of his personal appearance : — 

* With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, 
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair, 
And frouzy pores, that taint the ambient air/ 

" ' Tell the dog,' said the poet to the messenger, * that he who 
wrote these can write more.' But Tonson, perfectly satisfied with 
this single triplet, hastened to comply with the author's request, 
without requiring any further specimen of his poetical powers. It 
would seem, on the other hand, that when Dryden neglected his 
stipulated labour, Tonson possessed powers of animadversion, which, 
though exercised in plain prose, were not a little dreaded by the poet. 
Lord Bolingbroke, already a votary of the Muses, and admitted to 
visit their high-priest, was wont to relate, that one day he heard 
another person enter the house. 'This,' said Dryden, 'is Tonson; 
you will take care not to depart before he goes away, for I have not 
completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me un- 
protected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can 
prompt his tongue.' " * 

Fielding lived some time in Bow Street, probably during 
his magistracy. 

We turn out of Bow Street into Eussell Street, so called 
from the noble family of that name, who possess great pro- 
perty in this quarter. It is pleasant to think that the name 
is accordant with the reputation of the place, for we are more 
than ever in the thick of wits and men of letters, especially 
of a race which was long peculiar to this country, literary 
politicians. At the north-east corner of the two streets 
was the famous Will's coffee-house, formerly the Eose, 
where Dryden presided over the literature of the town ; and 
on the other side of the way, on a part of the site of 
the present Hummums, stood Button's coffee-house, no less 

* Works of Dryden, vol. i., p. 387. Sir Walter thus notices a letter 
of Tonson's on the subject of Dry den's contribution to one of the 
volumes known under the title of his Miscellanies: — " The contribu- 
tion, although ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who 
wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter to Dry- 
den, which is fortunately still preserved, as a curious specimen of the 
minutias of a literary bargain in the seventeenth century. Tonson, 
with reference to Dryden, having offered a strange bookseller six 
hundred lines for twenty guineas, enters into a question in the rule of 
three, by which he discovers and proves, that for fifty guineas he has 
only 1,446 lines, which he seems to take more unkindly, as he had 
not counted the lines until he had paid the money; from all which 
Jacob infers, that Dryden ought, out of generosity, at least to throw 
him in something to the bargain, especially as he had used him more 
kindly in Juvenal, which, saith old Jacob, is not reckoned so easy to 
translate as Ovid." — Vol. i., p. 379. 



DRYDEN BEATEN BY HIRED RUFFIANS. 313 

celebrated as the resort of the wits and poets of the time of 
Queen Anne. 

Dryden is identified with the neighbourhood of Covent 
Garden. He presided in the chair at Eussell Street; his plays 
came out in the theatre at the other end of it ; he lived in 
Gerrard Street, which is not far off; and, alas! for the anti- 
climax ! he was beaten by hired bravos in Eose Street, now 
called Eose Alley. Great men come down to posterity with 
their proper aspects of calmness and dignity ; and we do not 
easily fancy that they received anything from their contem- 
poraries but the grateful homage which is paid them by our- 
selves. " But the life of a wit," says Steele, "is a warfare 
upon earth." Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the beautiful 
description given by Dryden of the Attic nights, he enjoyed 
with Sir Charles Sedley and others, observes, " He had not 
yet experienced the disadvantages attendant on such society, 
or learned how soon literary eminence becomes the object 
of detraction, of envy, of injury, even from those who can 
best feel its merit, if they are discouraged by dissipated 
habits from emulating its flight, or hardened by perverted 
feeling against loving its possessors." * 

The outrage perpetrated upon the sacred shoulders of the 
poet was the work of Lord Eochester, and originated in a 
mistake not creditable to that would-be great man and das- 
tardly debauchee. The following is Sir Walter's account of 
the matter. 

" The * Essay on Satire ' (by Lord Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of 
Buckinghamshire), though written, as appears from the title-page of 
the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, with this 
observation : — I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own 
share is not the least. The king having perused it, is no way dis-. 
satisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr [yden], his 
patron Lord M [ulgrave], having a panegyric in the midst. From 
hence it is evident that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the 
author ; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and 
cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed ; and he thus coolly 
expressed his intention in another of his letters : — ' You write me 
word that I am out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have 
admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a 
rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that 
could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which 
is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please, and 
leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel.' 

" In pursuance of this infamous resolution, upon the night of the 
18th December, 1679, Dryden was waylaid by hired ruffians, and 



Dryden, vol. i., p. 114. 



314 DRYDEN BEATEN BY HIRED RUFFIANS. 

severely beaten, as he passed through Eose Street, Covent Garden, 
returning from Will's coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard Street. 
A reward of fifty pounds was in vain offered in the * London Gazette ' 
and other newspapers, for the discoverers of the perpetrators of this 
outrage. The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester 
as the employer of the bravos, with whom the public suspicion joined 
the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront 
thus avenged. In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to 
hired bravos to avenge his personal quarrels against any one, more 
especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his 
account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, 
the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed 
Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners 
and sentiments of the people. Encounters, where the assailants took 
all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as 
honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to 
assassination ; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was 
waylaid and had his nose slit by some young men of rank, for a 
reflection upon the King's theatrical amours. This occasioned the 
famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry 
Act, an Act highly necessary, for so far did our ancestors' ideas of 
manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killegrew introduces the 
hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the 
piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, 
who had cheated him. 

"It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark, 
and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But if 
Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester's own hand, 
without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently 
made a matter of reproach to him : a sign, surely, of the penury of 
subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which 
might have happened to the greatest hero that ever lived, was resorted 
to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose Alley ambuscade became 
almost proverbial ; and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, 
and upon whose shoulders the blows ought injustice to have descended, 
mentions the circumstance in his ' Art of Poetry/ with a cold and 
self-sufficient sneer : — 

' Though praised and punished for another's rhymes, 

His own deserve as great applause sometimes.'' 
To which is added in a note, ' A libel for which he was both applauded 
and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter.' This 
flat and conceited couplet, and note, the noble author judged it proper 
to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer 
the friend of Rochester, and, perhaps, no longer the enemy of Dryden, 
has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt 
it deserved : — 

' Poets in honour of the truth should write, 

With the same spirit brave men for it fight ; 

And though against him causeless hatreds rise, 

And daily where he goes of late, he spies 

The scowls ot sudden and revengeful eyes ; 

'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear. 

And serves a cause too good to let him fear & 



will's coffee-house. 315 

He fears no poison from incensed drab, 

No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's sxab ; 

Nor any other snares of mischief laid, 

Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade ; 

From any private cause where malice reigns, 

Or general pique all blockheads have to brains.' " * 

We dismiss this specimen of the times, that we may enjoy 
the look of Dryden as posterity sees it, — that is to say, as 
that of the first poet of his class, presiding over the tastes and 
aspirations of the town. Milton sat in his suburban bower, 
equally removed from outrage and compliment, and con- 
templating a still greater futurity. In the following passage 
from the ' Country and City Mouse,' by Prior and Montagu, 
Dryden, it is true, is spoken of with hostility, but his acknow- 
ledged predominance shines through it. Prior's instinct 
misgave him in writing against his natural master. 

"Then on they jogg'd; and since an hour of talk 
Might cut a banter on the tedious walk, 
As I remember, said the sober mouse, 
I've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee-house; 
Thither, says Brindle, thou shalt go and see 
Priests supping coffee, sparks and poets tea; 
Here rugged frieze, there quality well drest, 
These baffling the grand Senior, those the Test, 
And there shrewd guesses made, and reasons given, 
That human laws were never made in heaven; 
But, above all, what shall oblige thy sight, 
And fill thy eye-balls with a vast delight, 
Is the poetic judge of sacred wit, 
Who does i' th' darkness of his glory sit; 
And as the moon w T ho first receives the light, 
With which she makes these nether regions bright, # 
So does he shine, reflecting from afar 
The rays he borrowed from a better star; 
For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow, 
Admired by all the scribbling herd below, 
Prom French tradition while he does dispense 
Unerring truths, 'tis schism, a damned offence, 
To question his, or trust your private sense." f 

Will's Coffee-house was at the western corner of Bow 
Street. It first had the title of the Eed Cow, then of the 
Rose; and we believe is the same house alluded to in the 
pleasant story in the second number of the l Tatler : ' — 
" Supper and friends expect we at the Rose." 

The Rose, however, was a common sign for houses of 
public entertainment. The company, of which our poet was 

* Dryden, vol. i., p. 203. f Poems on State Affairs, vol. i., p. 99. 



316 DRYDEN AT WILL'S COFFEE-HOUSE. 

the arbiter, sat up-stairs in what was then called the dining, 
but now the drawing-room ; and there was a balcony, to which 
his chair was removed in summer from its prescriptive corner 
by the fire-side in winter. " The appeal," says Malcolm, 
" was made to him upon every literary dispute. The com- 
pany did not sit in boxes, as at present, but at various tables 
which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was per- 
mitted in the public room : it was then so much in vogue that 
it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, 
as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided 
themselves into parties ; and we are told by Ward, that the 
young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the principal 
table, thought it a great honour to have a pinch out of 
Dryden' s snuff-box." * 

A lively specimen of a scene with Dryden in this coffee- 
house has been afforded us by Dean Lockier. "I was about 
seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, " an 
odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of 
awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the 
country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and 
appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's, 
to have the pleasure of seeing the most celelebrated wits of 
that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that 
ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, 
as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately 
published. ' If anything of mine is good,' says he, l 'tis 
" Mac-Flecno; " and I value myself the more upon it, because 
it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.' On hear- 
ing this* I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice 
but just loud enough to be heard, ' that " Mac-Flecno " was a 
very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first 
that was ever writ that way.' On this, Dryden turned short 
upon me, as surprised at my interposing ; asked me how long 
*I had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile, 
' Pray, sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ 
so before ? ' — I named Boileau's ' Lutrin,' and Tassoni's 
1 Secchia Eapita,' which I had read, and knew Dryden had 
borrowed some strokes from each. ' 'Tis true,' said Dryden, 
' I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in 
going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see 
him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation ; 

* Spence's ' Anecdotes,' p. 263. 



CHARACTER OF DRYDEN. 317 

went to see him accordingly ; and was well acquainted with 
him after, as long as he lived."* 

Dryden's mixture of simplicity, good-nature, and good 
opinion of himself, is here seen in a very agreeable manner. 
It must not be omitted, that it was to this house Pope was 
taken when a boy, by his own desire, on purpose to get a 
sight of the great man ; which he did. According to Pope, 
he was plump, with a fresh colour and a down look, and not 
very conversable. It appears, however, that what he did say 
was much to the purpose ; and a contemporary mentions his 
conversation on that account as one of the few things for 
which the town was desirable. He was a temperate man ; 
though, for the last ten years of his life, Davies informs us 
that he drank with Addison a great deal more than he used to 
do, " probably so far as to hasten his end." 

It is curious, considering his peculiar sort of reputation 
with posterity, that Addison's name should be found so con- 
nected in his own time with this species of irregularity. The 
same cause is supposed to have hastened his own end ; and it 
is related by Pope, that he was obliged to avoid the Russell 
Street Coffee-house, and the bad hours of Addison, otherwise 
they might have hastened his. 

Will's Coffee-house was the great emporium of libels and 
scandal. The channels that have since abounded for the 
dregs of literature had scarcely then begun to exist ; and, 
instead of purveying for periodical publications, the retailers 
of obloquy attended among the minor wits of this place, and 
distributed the last new lampoon in manuscript. There was a 
drunken fellow of that time, named Julian, who acquired an 
infamous celebrity in this way. Sir Walter Scott, in his 
edition of Dryden, has given the following account of him and 
his vocation. 

" The extremity of license in manners necessarily leads to equal 
license in personal satire, and there never was an age in which both 
were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal 
and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the estab- 
lished burden formerly sung to them : — 

' Lampone lampone, camerada lampone.' 

"Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as 
much as any of his age ; to which his own words in several places of 
his writing, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves 
in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his pro- 
logues and epilogues, he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and 

* Spence's ' Anecdotes,' p. 59. 



318 LAMPOONS OF WILL'S COFFEE-HOUSE, 

to the employment which it found for the half and three-quarter wits 
and courtiers of the time! 

* Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes; 
Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times; 
Scandal, the glory of the English nation, 

Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion : 
Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise, 
They had agreed their play before their prize. 
Faith, they may hang their harp upon the willows; 
'Tis just like children when they box their pillows/ 
" Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity 
of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the 
scandal widely while the authors remained concealed, was founded 
the self-erected office of Julian, Secretary, as he calls himself, to the 
Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits' Coffee-house, as it was 
called; and dispersed among the crowds who frequented that place of 
gay resort copies of the lampoons which had been privately commu- 
nicated to him by their authors. 'He is described/ says Mr. Malone, 
■ as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel.' 
Several satires were written, in the form of addresses to him as well 
as the following. There is one among the ' State Poems,' beginning — 
' Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write, 
Not moved by envy, malice or by spite, 
Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense, 
But merely to supply thy want of pence: 

• This did inspire my muse, when out at heel, 
She saw her needy secretary reel; 
Grieved that a man, so useful to the age, 
Should foot it in so mean an equipage ; 

A crying scandal that the fees of sense 
Should not be able to support the expense 
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants, 
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.' 

"Another, called a ' Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been 
written by the Duke of Buckingham. 

" From a passage in one of the letters from the 'Dead to the Living,' 
we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor, 
called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay ; and there was no 
more that ' brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and 
vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new 
ones faster than lampoons exposed them." * 

These " "brisk spirits" have still their descendants, and 
always will have till their betters cease to set the example of 
railing, or to encourage it. There is a difference, indeed, 
between the lampoons of such men and those of Dry den, or 
the literary personalities to which some ingenious minds will 
give way, before they well know what they are about, out 
of mere emulation, perhaps, of the names of Pope and 
Boileau. But it is not to be expected that the others will 
* Vol. xv., p. 218, 



ADDISON, AND BUTTON'S COFFEE HOUSE. 319 

stop where they do, or refine with the progress of their years 
and knowledge. The most generous sometimes find it diffi- 
cult to leave off saying ill-natured things of one another, out 
of shame of yielding, or the habit of indulging their irrita- 
bility. They endeavour to reconcile themselves to it by 
trying to think that the abuse has a utility ; but when they 
come to this point, the doubt is a proof that they ought to 
forego it, and help to teach the world better. Honest con- 
tention, however, is one thing, and scandal is another. The 
dealer in the latter has always a petty mind and inferior 
understanding, most likely accompanied with conscious un- 
worthiness ; the great secret of the love of scandal lying in 
the wish to level others with the calumniators. 

"Will's continued to be the resort of the wits at least till 1710," 
says Mr. Malcolm. "Probably Addison established his servant 
[Button] in a new house about 1712, and his fame after the produc- 
tion of ' Cato,' drew many of the Whigs thither." * 

"Addison," says Pope, "passed each day alike ; and much in the 
manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, 
dined en famille, and then went to Will's : only he came home earlier 
a'nights." And again : " Addison usually studied all the morning ; 
then met his party at Button's ; dined, and staid there five or six 
hours; and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for 
about a vear, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so 
I quitted it." f 

Button had been a servant of the Countess of "Warwick, 
whom Addison married. It is said that when the latter was 
dissatisfied with the Countess (we believe during the period 
of his courtship), he used to withdraw the company from her 
servant's coffee-house. Unfortunately it is as easy to believe 
a petty story of Addison as a careless one of Steele. 
Addison, intellectually a great man, was complexionally a 
little one. He was timid, bashful, and reserved, and instinct- 
ively sought success by private channels and disingenous 
measures. 

Under the influence of these eminent persons, Button's 
became the head-quarters of the Whig literati, as Will's had 
been that of the Tory. Steele, however, dated his poetical 
papers in the ' Tatler ' from Will's, as the old haunt of the 
town muse. Ferhaps the Whiggery of Button's- Avas one of 
the reasons why Pope left off going there, as he did not wish 
-to indentify himself with either party. Ambrose Philips is 
said to have hung up a rod at that coffee-house, as an intima- 
tion of what Pope should receive at his hands, in case the 
* Spence, p. 263, f Ibid, p, 28S- 



320 POPE, PHIUPS, AND GARTH. 

satirist chose to hazard it. A similar threat is related of 
Cibber. The behaviour of both has been cried out against 
as unhandsome, considering the little person and bodily in- 
firmities of the illustrious offender : but as the threateners 
were so much his inferiors in wit, and he exercised his great 
powers at their expense, it might not be difficult to show that 
their conduct was as good as his. Why attack a man, if he 
is to be allowed no equality of retaliation ? The truth is, that 
personal satire is itself an unhandsome thing, and a childish 
one, and there will be no end to childish retorts, till the more 
grown understandings reform. Pope accused Philips of pil- 
fering his pastorals, and of " turning a Persian tale for half- 
a-crown ; " the one an offence not very likely, unless, indeed, 
all common- places may be said to be stolen ; the other no 
offence at all, though it might have been a misfortune. 
These littlenesses in great men are a part of the childhood of 
society. They show us how young it still is, and what a 
parcel of wrangling schoolboys (in that respect) a future 
period may consider us. 

One of the most agreeable memories connected with 
Button's is that of Garth, a man whom, for the sprightliness 
and generosity of his nature, it is a pleasure to name. He 
was one of the most amiable and intelligent of a most amiable 
and intelligent class of men — the physicians. 

Armstrong, another poet and physician and not unworthy 
of either class, for genius and goodness of heart, though he 
had the weakness of affecting a bluntness of manners, and of 
swearing, drew his last breath in this street. He is well 
known as the author of the most elegant didactic poem in 
the language, — the ' Art of Preserving Health.' The affecta- 
tions of men of genius are sometimes in direct contradiction 
to their best qualities, and assumed to avoid a show of pre- 
tending what they feel. Armstrong, who had bad health, and 
was afraid perhaps of being thought effeminate, affected 
the bully in his prose writings ; and he was such a swearer, 
that the late Mr. Fuseli's indulgence in that infirmity has 
been attributed to his keeping company with the Doctor when 
a youth. We never met with a habitual swearer in whom 
the habit could not be traced to some feeling of conscious 
weakness. Fuseli swore as he painted, in the hope of making 
up for the defects of his genius by the violence of his style. 

At No. 8, Russell Street, Boswell was introduced to his 
formidable friend of whom he became the biographer. The 



boswell' s INTRODUCTION TO JOHNSON. £>21 

house then belonged to Davies the bookseller. The account 
given us of his first interview is highly characteristic of both 
parties. Boswell had a thorough specimen of his future 
acquaintance at once, and Johnson evidently saw completely 
through Boswell. 

"Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor," saith the particular Boswell, 
"who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, 
told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently 
to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by 
some unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming to us. 

" Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and 
talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though some- 
what pompous, he was an entertaining companion ; and his literary 
performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a 
friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife (who had 
been celebrated for her beauty), though upon the stage for many 
years, maintained an uniform decency of character, and Johnson 
esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy with them as any 
family which he used to visit. Mr. Davies recollected several of 
Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the best of the many 
imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them. He increased 
my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man whose 
works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be so 
peculiarly excellent. 

"At last," continues Mr. Boswell, "on the 16th of May, when I 
was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlour, after having drank tea with 
him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectdly came into the shop, and 
Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass-door in the room 
in which we were sitting, advancing towards us — he announced his 
awful approach somewhat as an actor in the part of Horatio, when 
he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, * Look, 
my lord, it comes.' I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's 
figure, from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Eeynolds soon 
after he had published his ' Dictionary,' in the attitude of sitting in 
his easy chair in deep meditation ; which was the first picture his 
friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and 
from which an engraving has been made for this work. Mr. Davies 
mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him; I was 
much agitated, and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of 
which I had heard much, I said to Davies, ' Don't tell where I come 
from.' — 'From Scotland,' cried Davies, roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' 
said I, ' I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' I am 
willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe 
and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense 
of my country. But however that might be, this speech was some- 
what unlucky ; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so 
remarkable, he seized the expression ' come from Scotland !' which I 
used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come away 
from it, or left it, retorted, ' That, sir, I find, is what a great many 
of your countrymen cannot help.' This stroke stunned me a good 
deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, 
and apprehensive of what might come next. He then addressed hiofc- 

T 



322 THE HUMMUMS. 

self to Davies': ' What do you think of Garrick ? he has refused me 
an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he knows the house 
will be full, and that an order will be worth three shillings.' Eager 
to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I ventured to 
say, ' 0, sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle 
to you/ ' Sir (said he, with a stern look,) I have known David 
Garrick longer than you have done ; and I know no right you have 
to talk to me on the subject' Perhaps I deserved this check ; for it 
was rather presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any 
doubt of the justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance 
and pupil. I noAV felt myself much mortified, and began to think that 
the hope I had long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was 
blasted. And, in truth, had not my ardour been uncommonly strong, 
and my resolution uncommonly persevering, so rough a reception 
might have deterred me for ever from making any further attempts. 
Fortunately, however, I remained upon the field, not wholly discom- 
fited." * * * " I was highly pleased with the extraordinary 
vigour of his conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away 
from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the 
evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an obser- 
vation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was 
satisfied that, though there was a roughness in his manner, there was 
no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and 
when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great 
man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying, 
* Don't be uneasy. I can see he likes you very well.' "* 

The Humnmms Hotel and Coffee-house which occupies the 
south-west corner of this street, and stretches round into 
Covent Garden market, is so called from an eastern word 
signifying baths. It was one of the earliest houses set up in 
England of that kind, and thence called bagnios ; and one of 
the few that retained their respectability. The generality 
were so much the reverse, that the word bagnio came to mean 
a brothel. It appears from a story we are about to relate, 
that people went to the Hummums not only to bathe, but to 
get themselves cupped. Bathing is too much neglected in 
this country ; but the consequences of our sedentary habits 
have forced upon us a greater degree of attention to it, and 
the imitation of the Turkish system of cleanliness has been 
carried further in vapour baths and the startling luxury of 
shampooing, which makes people discover that they have in 
general two or three skins too many. Englishmen, in the pride 
of their greater freedom, often wonder how Eastern nations 
can endure their servitude. This is one of the secrets by 
which they endure it. A free man in a dirty skin is not in 
so fit a state to endure existence as a slave with a clean one ; 
because nature insists, that a due attention to the clay which 
* Boswell, vol. i.. p. 373. 



GHOST STOEY THERE. dJo 

our souls inhabit, shall be the first requisite to the comfort of 
the inhabitant. Let us not get rid of our freedom ; let us 
teach it rather to those that want it ; but let such of us as 
have them, by all means get rid of our dirty skins. There is 
now a moral and intellectual commerce among mankind, as 
well as an interchange of inferior goods ; we should send 
freedom to Turkey as well as clocks and watches, and import 
not only figs, but a fine state of the pores. 

Of the Hummums there is a ghost-story in Boswell, a thing 
we should as little dream of in this centre of the metropolis, 
as look for a ghost at noonday. The reader will see how 
much credit is to be given it, by the style of the narrator, 
who, with all his good-will towards superstition (and it is no 
less a person that speaks than Dr. Johnson), had an inveterate 
love of truth, which led him to defeat his own object. 

"Amongst the numerous prints," says Boswell, "pasted on the 
walls of the dining-room at Streatham, was ' Hogarth's Modern Mid- 
night Conversation.' I asked him what he knew of Parson Ford, who 
makes a conspicuous figure in the riotous group. Johnson. ' Sir, he 
was my acquaintance and relation, — my mother's nephew. He had 
purchased a living in the country, but not simoniacally. I never saw 
him but in the country. I have been told that he was a man of great 
parts, very profligate, but I never heard he was impious.' Boswell. 
' Was there not a story of his ghost having appeared?' Johnson. ' Sir, 
it was believed. A waiter at the Hummums, in which house Ford died, 
had been absent some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was 
dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the story, he met him ; 
going down again he met him a second time. When he came up, he 
asked some people of the house what Ford could be doing there. 
They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in which he 
lay for some time. When he recovered he said he had a message to 
deliver to some women from Ford; but he was not to tell what, or to 
whom. He walked out; he was followed ; but somewhere about St. 
Paul's they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the 
message, and the women exclaimed, ' Then we are all undone ! ' 
Dr. Pellett, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of 
this story, and he said, the evidence was irresistible. My wife went 
to the Hummums (it is a place where people get themselves cupped). 
I believe she went with intention to hear about this story of Ford. 
At first they were unwilling to tell her; but after they had talked to 
her, she came away satisfied that it was true. To be sure the man 
had a fever; and this vision may have been the beginning of it. But 
if the message to the women, and their behaviour upon it, were true 
as related, there was something supernatural. That rests upon his 
word : and there it remains.' " * 

At the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, Covent Garden 
(or, as it would be more properly spelt, Convent Garden j) 

* Boswell, vol. iii., p. 378. 

•f It is still so called by many of the poorer orders, wiio are oftener 



324 COVENT GARDEN. 

extended from Drcuy Lane to St. Martin's Lane, and was 
surrounded by a brick wall. It bad lately belonged to the 
abbots of Westminster, whom it supplied, doubtless, with 
fruit and vegetables, as it has since done the metropolis, and 
hence its appellation. The reader will see it in the old print 
of London by Aggas. There was a break into it on the 
south-west, made by the garden of Bedford House, which stood 
facing the Strand between the present Bedford and South- 
ampton Streets. On the dissolution of the monasteries, Covent 
Garden was given to the Duke of Somerset, and on his fall, to 
John, Earl of Bedford, whose family converted it into a 
pasture ground, including Long Acre, then part of the fields 
leading to St. Giles's. His descendant Francis, about seventy 
years afterwards, let the whole pasture on a building lease, 
and built the old church for the intended inhabitants. The 
architect was Inigo Jones. To the same hand we are indebted 
for the portico of the north-eastern quarter, which still 
remains. There was a continuation of it on the south-east, 
which was burnt down. It was to have been carried all round 
the square, and the absence of it might be regretted on the 
score of beauty ; but porticoes are not fit for this climate, 
unless where the object is to furnish a walk during the rain. 
Covered walks devoted to that purpose, and conveniently dis- 
tributed, might be temptations to out-of-door exercise in bad 
weather. If they succeeded, they would effect a very desir- 
able end. But covered walks, however beautiful, which are 
not used in that way, are rather to be deprecated in this cold 
and humid climate. In Italy, where the summer sun at 
noon-day burns like a cauldron, they are much to the pur- 
pose ; but the more sun we can get in England the better. 
Luckily, there is a convenience in this portico, as far as the 
theatre is concerned ; otherwise the circuit would be more 
agreeable without it, and the coffee-houses of the place more 
light and cheerful. 

Of the style of building observed in the church there is a 
well-known story. " The Earl is said to have told Inigo 
Jones he wished to have as plain and convenient a structure 
as possible, and but little better than a barn ; to which the 
architect replied, he would build a barn, but that it should 
fce the handsomest in England." * 

ta the right in their old English than is suspected. Some of them call 
it Common Garden, which is a better corruption than its present one, 
* Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv.. p. 213, 



Inigo Jones's church. 



m 



Inigo Jones's church was burnt down in the year 1795, 
owing to the carelessness of some plumbers who were mend- 
ing the roof. " When the flames were at their height," says 
Malcolm, " the portico and massy pillars made a grand scene, 
projected before a back-ground of liquid fire, which raged 
with so much uncontrolled fury, that not a fragment of wood, 
in or near the walls, escaped destruction." * 




INJGO JONES S CHURCH, AND OLD COVENT GARDEN. 

The barn-like taste, or in other words the Grecian (for 
usefulness and simplicity are the secrets of it, and the Temple 
of Theseus and a common barn have the same principles of 
structure), was copied in the new edifice. By a passage 
quoted in the Londinmm Redivium from the Weekly Journal 
of April 22, 1727, it appears that the portico of the old 
church had been altered by the inhabitants, and restored by 
the Earl of Burlington, " out of regard to the memory of the 
celebrated Inigo Jones, and to prevent our countrymen being 
exposed for their ignorance." The spirit of this portico has 
been retained, and the church of St. Paul's Covent garden is 
one of the most pleasing structures in the metropolis. 

A great many actors have been buried in this spot ; among 
them, Eastcourt the famous mimic, Edwin, Macklin, and King. 
We shall speak of one or two of them presently, but it is 
desirable, especially in a work of this kind, to observe a 
chronological order. The mere observance itself conveys in- 
* Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 219. 



326 CAR, EARL OF SOMERSET 

formation. Among the variety of persons buried here may 
be mentioned, first: 

Car, Earl of Somerset, in the old church. His burial in 
Covent Garden was, doubtless, owing to his connection with 
the family of Russell, his daughter having married William, 
afterwards Earl and Duke of Bedford, father of the famous 
patriot. It is said that his lady was bred up in such igno- 
rance of the dishonour of her parents, that having met by 
accident with a book giving an account of it, she fainted away, 
and was found in that condition by her domestics. Her 
lover's family were very averse to the match, but wisely 
allowed it upon due trial, and had no reason to repent their 
generosity. To read the history of the foolish and unprin- 
cipled Countess of Somerset, who would suppose that her 
daughter was to give birth to the conscientious martyr for 
liberty? But the blood which folly makes wicked, a good 
education may render noble. 

Butler in the church-yard. The popular notion that he was 
starved is unfounded ; but he was very ill-treated by a court 
whom his wit materially served. It is said that Charles, once 
and away, gave him a hundred pounds. This is possible ; 
but it is at least as possible that he gave him nothing, though. 
he would willingly have done it, perhaps, had his debaucheries 
left him the means. Charles, in his way, was as poor as 
Butler, though not as honourably so, for it does not appear 
that the poet was unwilling to labour for his subsistence. 
There is a mystery, however, in Butler's private affairs. He 
once appears to have had some office in the family of the 
Countess of Kent. Perhaps he was not a very good man of 
business, though the learning exhibited in ' Hudibras' showed 
how he could work on a favourite subject. When men 
succeed to this extent in what nature evidently designs them 
for, great allowance is to be made for their disinclination to 
other tasks ; and Butler had no children to render the neglect 
of his fortune criminal. The Duke of Buckingham, who 
once undertook to "do something for him," and had a 
meeting for the purpose at a coffee-house, saw a pander of his 
go by the window with a " brace of ladies," and going after 
him, we hear no more of his Grace. Luckily, to prevent 
him from starvation, Butler found a friend in the excellent 
Mr. Longueville of the Temple, a scholar and a real gentle- 
man, who did not confine his generosity to an admiration of 
him in books. The poet is understood to have been indebted 



BUTLER. 327 

to him for support during the latter part of his life ; and 
it was he who buried him in this church-yard. It is to 
Mr. Longueville that we are indebted for the publication 
of Butler's " Kemains," which are quite worthy of the wit 
of " Hudibras," and deserve to be more generally known. 
Butler was the greatest wit that ever wrote in verse ; perhaps 
the greatest that ever wrote at all, meaning by wit the union 
of remote ideas. He was undoubtedly the most learned. 
His political poem is out of date ; and much of the humour 
that delighted the cavaliers must, of necessity, be lost to us ; 
but passages of it will always be repeated ; and it is difficult 
to hear his name mentioned, without quoting some of his 
rhymes. He was the first man that gave rhyme itself an air 
of wit. His couplets are not only witty themselves, but seem 
to add a new idea to their imagery in the very sounds at the 
end of them. His startling turns of thought are accompanied 
by as surprising a turn in the cadence, as if the echo itself 
could not help laughing. Thus his doctor's shop is 

" stored with deletery medicines, 

Which whosoever took is dead since : " 

his sour religionists 

" Compound for sins they are inclined to, 
By damning those they have no mind to : " 
and again, 

" Synods are mystical bear-gardens, 
Where elders, deputies, church-wardens, 
And other members of the court, 
Manage the Babylonish sport; 
For prolocutor, scribe, and bear-ward, 
Do differ only in a mere word: 
Both are but several synagogues 
Of carnal men, and bears, and dogs ; 
Both antichristian assemblies 
To mischief bent, as far 's in them lies." 

His most quoted rhyme, when 

" Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, 

Was beat with fist instead of a stick, 

is, singularly enough, no rhyme at all ; but the surprise of 
the echo, and the truth conveyed in it, affect us as if it were 
perfect. Here are one or two more of the wilful order, very 
ludicrous : — 

The captive knight 



And pensive squire, both bruised in body 
And conjured into safe custody. 



328 SIR fETER LELt. 



in all the fabrick 



You could not see one stone or a brick. 

Who deals in destiny's dark counsels, 
And sage opinions of the moon sells. 

Those wholesale critics that in coffee- 
Houses cry down all philosophy." 

Mrs. Pilkington tells us that Swift took down a "Hudibras" 
one day, and ordered her to examine him in the book, when, 
to her great suprise, she found he remembered " every line, 
from beginning to end of it."* Mrs. Pilkington is a lady whose 
word is to be taken cum multis granis ; nor is it very likely 
she should ever have heard the Dean repeat a whole volume 
through ; but if Swift knew any author entire, Butler is 
likely to have been the man. Butler had the same politics, 
the same love of learning, the same wit, the same apparent 
contempt of mankind, the same charity underneath it, and 
the same impatient wish to see them wiser. His style of 
writing is evidently the origin of Swift's. If the reader is 
not yet acquainted with his ' Remains,' the following sample 
or two will give him a desire to be so : — 

" The truest characters of ignorance 
Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance ; 
As blind men use to bear their noses higher, 
Than those who have their eyes and sight intire." 

***** 

" There needs no other charm, nor conjuror, 
To raise infernal spirits up, but fear ; 
That makes men pull their horns in like a snail, 
That's both a prisoner to itself, and jail ; 
Draws more fantastic shapes than in the grains 
Of knotted wood, in some men's crazy brains, 
When all the cocks they think they see, and bulla, 
Are only in the inside of their skulls." 

Sir Peter Lely, the painter of the meretricious beauties 
of the court of Charles II. — Pope's couplet on him is well 
known : — 

" Lely on animated canvass stole 
The sleepy eye that spoke the melting soul." 

The canvass is more sleepy than animated, and the ladies 
more like what they were in inclination than in features. 
However, there is a great likeness on that very account. 
They are all of a sisterhood ; — qualem non decet esse sororum. 
A master of pictorial criticism has said of the collection of 
them at Windsor Castle, that " they look just like what they 

* Memoirs of Mrs. Letitia Pilkington. Dublin, 1748, vol. i., p. 136. 



SOUTHERN. 329 

were, a set of kept-mistresses, painted, tawdry, showing off 
their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces, without one 
trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of sentiment 
to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of 
them ; and though $he most voluptuous in her attire and 
attitude, the most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth 
( Cleveland), in her helmet and plumes, looks quite like a 
heroine of "romance, or modern Amazon; but for an air of 
easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing 

but being thought coy, commend us to my Lady above, 

in the sky-blue drapery, thrown carelessly over her shoulders . 
As paintings, these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. 
They have an affected ease, but a real hardness of manner 
and execution ; and they have that contortion of attitude and 
setness of features, which we afterwards find carried to so 
disgusting and insipid an excess in Knell er's portraits. Sir 
Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than Sir Godfrey 
ICneller — that is the highest praise that can be accorded to 
him. He had more spirit, more originalty, and was the live- 
lier coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed con- 
siderable mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. 
Neither of them could be ranked among great painters, yet 
they were thought by their contemporaries and themselves 
superior to every one. At the distance of a hundred years 
we see the thing plainly enough." * Sir Peter was a West- 
phalian, of a family named Vander Yaas. His father was an 
officer in the army, who, having been born in a perfumer's 
house which had a lily for its sign, got the name of Captain 
Du Lys, or Lely, and the cognomen was retained by his son. 
He aimed at magnificence in his style of living, probably in 
imitation of his predecessor at the English court, Vandyke ; 
but there was a certain coarseness about him which showed 
the inferiority of his taste in that particular, as well as in the 
rest. 

Wycherly in the Church. See Bow Street. 

Southern, one of those dramatic writers who, without much 
genius, succeed in obtaining a considerable name, and justly, 
by dint of genuine feeling for common nature. He began in 
Dryden's time, who knew and respected his talents, was known 
and respected by Pope, and lived to enjoy a similar regard 
from Gray. " I remember," says Oldys, " this venerable old 
gentleman, when he lived in Covent Garden, and used to 
* Hazlitt's * Picture Galleries of England,' p. 80. 



830 EASTCOURT. 

frequent the evening prayers in the church there. He was 
always neat and decently dressed, commonly in black, with 
his silver sword, and silver locks." Gray, in a letter to 
Walpole, dated Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, 1737, says, 
" We have old Mr. Southern at a gentleman's house, a little 
way off, who often comes to see us ; he is now seventy-seven 
years old, and has- almost wholly lost his memory ; but is as 
agreeable an old man as can be ; at least I persuade myself so 
when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko." 
Southern died about nine years after this period, aged about 
eighty-five. With all the respect he obtained, probably a 
great deal more by the decency and civility of his habits 
than by his genius, Southern, it appears, was not above 
making application to the nobility and others to buy tickets 
for his plays. 

Joe Haines, the comedian. See Drury Lane. 

Eastcourt, the comedian — or mimic, rather — for, like most 
players who devote themselves to mimicry, which is a kind of 
caricature portrait-painting, his comedy or general humour 
was inferior to it. He was, however, a man of wit as well as 
a mimic ; and, in spite of a talent which seldom renders men 
favourites in private, was so much regarded, that, when the 
Beef-steak Club was set up (which a late author says must 
not be confounded with the Beef-steak Club held in Covent 
Garden Theatre and the Lyceum), Eastcourt was appointed 
provveditore or caterer, and presented as a badge of distinc- 
tion with a small gridiron of gold, which he wore about his 
neck fastened to a green ribbon. He is said at one time to 
have been a tavern-keeper, in which quality (unless it was in 
the other) Parneli speaks of him in the beginning of one of 
his poems : — 

Gay Bacchus liking Estcourt's wine 

A noble meal bespoke us, 
And for tbe guests that were to dine 
Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus.* 

* The best account we are acquainted with of the various Beef-steak 
Clubs has been given us by the good-humoured author of ' Wine and 
Walnuts.' His book is an antiquarian fiction, but not entirely such ; 
and the present account, among others, may be taken as fact. George 
Lambert, Bieh's scene-painter at Covent Garden, says he, " being a 
man of wit, and of repute as an artist, was frequently visited by 
persons of note while at his work in the scene-room. In those days 
it was customary for men of fashion to visit the green-room, and to 
indulge in a morning lounge behind the curtain of the theatre. 
Lambert, when preparing his designs for a pantomine or new spectacle 



EASTCOURT. 331 

But his greatest honour is the following remarkable testi- 
mony borne to his merits by Sir Eichard Steele, whose own 
fineness of nature was never more beautifully evinced in any 
part of his writings : — 

" Poor Eastcourt ! the last time I saw him we were plotting to show 
the town his great capacity for acting in his full light, by introducing 

(for which exhibitions the manager, Rich, was much renowned), 
would often take his chop or steak cooked on the German stove, 
rather than quit his occupation for the superior accommodation of a 
neighbouring tavern. Certain of his visitors, men of taste, struck 
with the novelty of the thing perhaps, or tempted by the savoury 
dish, took a knife and fork with Lambert, and enjoyed the treat. 
Hence the origin of the Beef- steak Club, whose social feasts were 
long held in the painting-room of this theatre, which, from its com- 
mencement, has enrolled among its members persons of the highest 
rank and fortune, and many eminent professional men and dis- 
tinguished wits. The Club subsequently met in an apartment of the 
late theatre ; then it moved to the Shakspeare Tavern; thence again 
to the theatre; until, being burnt out in 1812, the meetings adjourned 
to the Bedford. At present the celebrated convives assemble at an 
apartment at the English Opera House in the Strand. 

"At the same time this social club flourished in England, and about 
the year 1749, a Beef-steak Club was established at the Theatre Royal, 
Dublin, of which the celebrated Mrs. Margaret Woffington was presi- 
dent. It was begun by Mr. Sheridan, but on a very different plan to 
that in London, no theatrical performer, save one female, being ad- 
mitted; and though called a Club, the manager alone bore all the 
expenses. The plan was, by making a list of about fifty or sixty 
persons, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, who were 
invited. Usually about half that number attended, and dined in the 
manager's apartment in the theatre. There was no female admitted 
but this Peg Woffington, so denominated by all her contemporaries, 
who was seated in a great chair at the head of the table, and elected 
president for the season. 

" 'It will readily be believed,' says Mr. Victor, who was joint pro- 
prietor of the house. ' that a club where there were good accommo- 
dations, such a lovely president, full of wit and spirit, and nothing to 
pay, must soon grow remarkably fashionable.' It did so — but we 
find it subsequently caused the theatre to be pulled to pieces about 
the manager's head. 

" Mr. Victor says of Mrs. Margaret, ' she possessed captivating 
charms as a jovial, witty bottle companion, but few remaining as a 
mere female.' We have Dr. Johnson's testimony, however, who had 
often gossipped with Mrs. Margaret in the green-room at old Drury, 
more in the lady's favour. 

" This author (Victor) says, speaking of the Beaf -steak Club, • It 
was a club of ancient institution in every theatre ; when the principal 
performers dined one day in the week together (generally Saturday), 
and authors and other geniuses were admitted members.' 

" The club in Ivy Lane, celebrated by Dr. Johnson, was originally 
a Beef -steak" 



332 EASTCOURT. 

him as dictating' to a set of young players, in what manner to speak 
this sentence and utter t'other passion. He had so exquisite a dis- 
cerning of what was defective in any object before him, that in an 
instant he could shew you the ridiculous side of what would pass for 
beautiful and just, even to men of no ill judgment, before he had 
pointed at the tailure. He was no less skilful in the knowledge of 
beauty ; and, I dare say, there is no one who knew him well, but can 
repeat more well-turned compliments, as well as smart repartees of 
Mr. Eastcourt's, than of any other man in England. This was easily 
to be observed in his inimitable faculty of telling a story, in which he 
would throw in natural and unexpected incidents to make his court 
to one part, and rally the other part of the company. Then he would 
vary the usage he gave them, according as he saw them bear kind or 
sharp language, He had the knack to raise up a pensive temper and 
mortify an impertinently gay one, as he saw them bear kind or sharp 
language. 

" It is an insolence natural to the wealthy, to affix, as much as in 
them lies, the character of a man to his circumstances. Thus it is 
ordinary with them to praise faintly the good qualities of those below 
them, and say, it is very extraordinary in such a man as he is, or the 
like, when they are forced to acknowledge the value of him whose 
lowness upbraids their exaltation. It is to this humour only that it 
is to be ascribed, that a quick wit in conversation, a nice judgment 
upon any emergency that could arise, and a most blameless inoffensive 
behaviour, could not raise this man above being received only upon 
the foot of contributing to mirth and diversion. But he was as easy 
under that condition as a man of so excellent talents was capable ; 
and since they would have it that to divert was his business, he did 
it with all the seeming alacrity imaginable, though it stung him to 
the heart that it was his business. Men of sense, who could taste his 
excellencies, were well satisfied to let him lead the way in conversa- 
tion, and play after his own manner ; but fools, who provoked him to 
mimicry, found he had the indignation to let it be at their expense 
who called for it ; and he would show the form of conceited heavy 
fellows as jests to the company at their own- request, in revenge for 
interrupting him from being a companion, to put on the character of 
a jester. 

" What was peculiarly excellent in this memorable companion was, 
that in the accounts he gave of persons and sentiments, he did not 
only hit the figure of their faces, and manner of their gestures, but he 
would in his narration fall into their very way of thinking, and this 
when he recounted passages wherein men of the best wit were con- 
cerned, as well as such wherein were represented men of the lowest 
rank of understanding. It is certainly as great an instance of self- 
love to a weakness, to be impatient of being mimicked, as any can be 
imagineJ. There were none but the vain, the formal, the proud, or 
those who were incapable of mending their faults, that dreaded him ; 
to others he was in the highest degree pleasing, and I do not know 
any satisfaction of any indifferent kind I ever tasted so much as 
having got over an impatience of seeing myself in the air he could 
put me when I have displeased him. It is indeed to his exquisite talent 
this way, more than any philosophy I could read on the subject, that my 
person is very little of my care ; and it is indifferent to me what is said of 
my shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my addi-ess. It is to poor East" 



SIR ROBERT STRANGE. 333 

court I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing 
a diminution to me, but what argues a depravity or my will. 

" I have been present with him among men of the most delicate 
taste a whole night, and have known him (for he saw it was desired) 
keep the discourse to himself the most part of it, and maintain his 
good humour with a countenance and in a language so delightful, 
without offence to any person or thing upon earth, still preserving 
the distance his circumstances obliged him to ; I say, I have seen him 
do all this in such a charming manner, that I am sure none of those I 
hint at will read this without giving him some sorrow for their 
abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter 
I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory that my 
eyes are too much suffused to let me go on."* 

Closterman in the church-yard. He was an indifferent, 
but once popular artist, whom we mention on account of his 
painful domestic end. He had a mistress, whom he thought 
devoted to him. She robbed him of everything she could lay her 
hands on, money, plate, jewels, and moveables, and fled out of 
the kingdom. He pined away with an impaired understanding, 
and was soon brought to the grave. Closterman was once set 
in competition with Sir Godfrey Kneller. He painted the 
family of the Duke of Marlborough, and had so many dis- 
putes about the picture with the Duchess, that Marlborough 
said to him, " It has given me more trouble to reconcile my 
wife and you, than to fight a battle." 

Arne, the celebrated musician, in the church -yard. See 
King Street. 

Sir Eobert Strange, the greatest engraver, perhaps, this 
country has seen ; that is to say, supposing the merits of an 
engraver to be in proportion to his relish for and imitation of 
his originals. Other men may have drawn a finer mechanical 
line, but none have surpassed Strange in giving the proper 
diversity of surfaces, or equalled him in transferring to hard 
copper the roundness and delicacy of flesh. His engravings 
from Titian almost convey something of the colours of that 
great painter. Like all true masters, Strange took pains with 
whatever he did, and bestowed attention on every part of it; 
so much indeed, that his love for his art appears to have been 
an exhausting one, and he was anxious to keep the burin out 
of the hands of his children. He had seen a great deal of the 
world, and was a very amiable as well as intelligent man. 
When young he was a great Jacobite, and fought sword-in- 
hand for the Pretender ; though it is said that a main cause of 
his ardour was the hope of attaining the hand of a fair friend, 
* Erorn a paper of Steele's in the ' Spectator,' No. 403. 



334 MACKLIN. 

equally devoted to the cause. It is pleasant to add, that he 
did attain it, and that she made him a good wife. Sir Robert 
was a Scotchman of a good family ; but his knighthood came 
from George the Third, a few years before the artist's death. 

Macklin, the comedian, in the church-yard, at the age of 
one hundred and seven, and upwards. We have spoken of 
him before in his stage character. His long age in the midst 
of cities and theatres is very remarkable. It seems to have 
been owing to the inheritance of a robust constitution — the 
great cause of longevity next to temperance, perhaps the 
greatest, unless contradicted by the reverse. Most persons 
who have been long-lived have had long-lived progenitors; 
but somebody must begin. The foundation is always tem- 
perance. Macklin must have been very lucky in his physical 
advantages, for he did not keep any very strict rein over his 
temper; nor does he appear to have followed any regimen, 
till latterly, and then he consulted the immediate ease of his 
stomach, and not the quality of what he took. However, his 
habits, whatever they were, were most likely regular. " It 
had been his constant rule," says his biographer, "for a period 
of thirty years and upwards, to visit a public-house called the 
Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden, where his 
usual beverage was a pint of beer called stout, which was 
made hot and sweetened with moist sugar, almost to a syrup. 
This, he said, balmed his stomach, and kept him from having 
any inward pains." * The same writer, in a report of a con- 
versation he had with Mr. Macklin, has left us an affecting 
but not unpleasing picture of the decay of faculties, remark- 
able to the very last for their shrewdness and vivacity. It is 
the liveliest picture of old mortality we ever met with. 

Question. " Well, Mr. Macklin, how do you do to-day ?" 

Answer. " Why, I hardly know, sir ; I think I am a little better 
than I was in the morning." 

Q. " Why, sir, did you feel any pain in the morning ? " 

A. " Yes, sir, a good deal." 

Q. « In what part ? " 

A. " Why, I feel a sort of a — a — a — " (shaking his head), " I forget 
everything ; I forget the word : I felt a kind of pain here" (putting 
his hand upon his left breast), — " but it is gone aAvay, and I am better 
now." 

Q. " How do you sleep, sir ? " 

A. " Not so well as I could wish ; I am becoming more wakeful 

* Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., &c, by Jamea 
Thomas .Kirkman, vol. ii. ; p. 419. 



CURIOUS DIALOGUE WITH MACKLIN. 335 

than usual ; I awoke last night two or three times : I got up twice, 
walked about my room here, and then went to bed again." 

Q. " Do you always get up when you awake, sir ? " 

A. " No, sir, not always ; but I get up and walk about as soon as I 
feel myself — there, now, it is all gone " (putting his hand upon his 
forehead). 

Q. " You get up, sir, I suppose, as soon as you feel yourself uneasy 
in bed?" 

A. " Yes, sir, when I begin to be troublesome to myself/' 

Q. " Do not you, sir, find it unpleasant to walk about here alone, 
and to have nobody to converse with ? " 

A. " Not at all, sir, I get up when I am tired abed, and I walk about 
till I am tired, and then I go to bed again; and so forth." 

Q. " But does it not afford you great pleasure when any person 
comes to see you ? " 

A. " Why, not so much as one would expect, sir." 

Q. " Are you not pleased when your friends come and converse 
with you ? " 

A. " I am always very happy to see my friends, and I should be 
very happy to hold a — a — a, see there now " 

Q. " A conversation you mean, sir ?" 

A. " Ay, a conversation. Alas ! sir, you see the wretched state of 
my memory — see there now, I could not recollect that common word 
— but I cannot converse. I used to go to a house very near this 
where my friends assemble .... it was a — a — a [a company] no, 
that's not the word, a — a — club, I mean. I was the father of it, but 
I could not hear all ; and what I did hear, I did not — a — a — under 
— under — understand; they were all very attentive to me, but I could 
ot be one of them. I always feel an uneasiness, when I don't know 
what the people are talking about. Indeed, I found, sir, that I was 
not fit to keep company — so I stay away." 

Q. " Have you been reading this morning, sir ? " 

A. " Yes, sir." 

Q. "What book?" 

A. <l I forget : — here, look at it ;" — handing the book. 

Q. " I see, it is Milton's ' Paradise Lost.' " 

[He then took the book out of my hand and said : — " I have only 
read this much" (about four pages) " these two days — but what I read 
yesterday, I have forgot to-day." He next read a few lines of the 
beginning inimitably well, and laying down the book, said] " I under- 
stand all that, but if 1 read any farther, I forget that passage which I 
understood before." 

Q. " But I perceive with satisfaction, sir, that your sight is very 
good." 

A. " Oh, sir, my sight, like everything else, begins to fail too ; 
about two days ago I felt — a — a — there now .... I have lost it — a 
pai'n just above my left eye, and heard something give a crack, and 
ever since, this eye (pointing to the left) has been painful." 

Q. "I think, sir, it would be advisable for you to refrain from 
reading a little time." 

A. " I believe you are in the right, sir." 

Q. " I think you appear at present free from pain ? " 

A. " Yes, sir, I am pretty comfortable now : but I find my — my— 
my strength is all gone. I feel myself going gradually." 



336 DR. WALCOT. 

Q. "But you are not afraid to die?" 

A. " Not in the least, sir— I never did any person any serious mis- 
chief in my life : — even when I gambled, I never cheated : — I know- 
that a — a — a — see, now — death, I mean, must come, and I am ready 
to give it up" (meaning the ghost). 

Q. " I understand you were at Drury Lane theatre last night ? " 

A. " Yes, sir, I was there." 

Q. " Yes, sir, the newspapers of this morning take notice of it." 

A. "Do they?" 

Y. " Yes, sir ; — the paragraph runs thus : — ' Among the numerous 
visitors at Drury Lane Theatre last night, we observed the Duke of 
Queensbury and the veteran Macklin, whose ages together amount to 
one hundred and ninety-six." 

Mr. Macklin. " The Duke of who ?" 

A. " The Duke of Queensbury, sir." 

Mr. Macklin. " I don't know that man. The Duke of Queensbury! 
The Duke of Queensbury! Oh ! ay, I remember him now very well : 
— The Duke of Queensbury old ! Why, sir, I might be his father ! 
ha! ha! ha!" 

Q. " Well, sir, I understand that you went to the Haymarket 
Theatre to see the * Merchant of Venice ? ' " 

A. " I did, sir." 

Q. " What is your opinion of Mr. Palmer's Shylock ?" 

[This question was answered by a shake of the head. Being de- 
sirous of hearing his opinion I asked him the second time.] 

Mr. Macklin. — " Why, sir, my opinion is, that Mr. Palmer played 
the character of Shylock in one style. In this scene there was a 
sameness, in that scene a sameness, and in every scene a sameness : 
it was all same ! same ! same ! — no variation. He did not look the 
character, nor laugh the character, nor speak the character of Shaks- 
peare's Jew. In the trial scene, where he comes to cut the pound of 
flesh, he was no Jew. Indeed, sir, he did not hit the part, nor the part 
did not hit him."* 

This conversation took place in September 1796 : in July 
1797 he died. 

Dr. Walcot, better known by the name of Peter Pindar. 
He was a coarse and virulent satirist, and content to write so 
many common-places, that they will stifle his works with 
posterity, with the exception of a few pieces. His humour, 
however, was genuine of its kind. His caricatures are strik- 
ing likenesses ; and the innocent simplicity which he is fond 
of affecting makes a ludicrous contrast with his impudence. 
Dr. Walcot's largest poems are worth little, and his serious 
worth nothing. What we think likely to last in the collec- 
tions, are his " Bozzy and Piozzi," his 'Koyal visit to 
Whitbread's Brewhouse,' one or two more, of that stamp, 
some of his " Odes to Academicians," and the immortal 

* Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., by James Thomas 
Kirkman, vol. ii., p. 416, 



COVENT GARDEN MARKET. 337 

" Pilgrims and the Peas," the hero of which is assuredly 
hobbling to this day, and will never arrive. Dr. Walcot was 
a man of taste in the fine arts, and produced some landscapes, 
which we believe do credit to his pencil. We have never 
seen them. His critical good taste is not to be disputed, 
though the Academicians, at one time, would have given a 
great deal to find it wanting. He was latterly blind, but 
maintained his spirits to the last. He had a fine skull, which 
he was not displeased to be called upon to exhibit, taking his 
wig oif, and saying " There," with a lusty voice; which formed 
a singular contrast with the pathos attached to the look of 
blind eyes. 

Covent Garden market has always been the most agreeable 
in the metropolis, because it is devoted exclusively to fruit, 
flowers, and vegetables. A few crockery-ware shops make 
no exceptions to this " bloodless " character. The seasons 
here regularly present themselves in their most gifted looks, 
— with evergreens in winter, the fresh verdure of spring, 
all the hues of summer, and whole loads of desserts in 
autumn. The country girls who bring the things to market 
at early dawn are a sight themselves worthy of the apples 
and roses ; the good-natured Irish women who attend to carry 
baskets for purchasers are not to be despised, with the half- 
humorous, half pathetic tone of their petitions to be employed; 
and the ladies who come to purchase, crown all. No walk 
in London, on a fine summer's day, is more ageeeable than 
the passage through the flowers here at noon, when the 
roses and green leaves are newly watered, and blooming faces 
come to look at them in those cool and shady avenues, while 
the hot sun is basking in the streets. On these occasions we 
were very well satisfied with the market in its old state. 
The old sheds, and irregular avenues, when dry, assorted 
well with the presence of leaves and fruits. They had a 
careless picturesque look, as if a bit of an old suburban 
garden had survived from ancient times. 

Nothing, however, but approbation can be bestowed on the 
convenient and elegant state into which the market has been 
raised by the magnificence of the noble proprietor, whose 
arms we are glad to see on the side next James Street. They 
are a real grace to the building and to the owner, for they 
are a stamp of liberality. In time we hope to see the roofs of 
the new market covered with shrubs and flowers, nodding 
over the balustrades, and fruits and red berries sparkling iu 

I 



B38 STORY OF LORD SANLWiCH. 

the sun.* As an ornament, nothing is more beautiful in 
combination than the fluctuating grace of foliage and the 
stability of architecture. And, as a utility, the more air and 
sun the better. There is never too much sun in this country, 
and every occasion should be seized to take advantage of it. 

The space between the church and the market is the scene 
of Hogarth's picture of the ' Frosty Morning.' Here in 
general take place the elections for Westminster. Sheridan 
has poured forth his good things in this spot, and Charles Fox 
won the hearts of multitudes. It would be an endless task to 
trace the recollections connected with the coffee-houses under 
the portico. Perhaps there is not a name of celebrity in the 
annals of wit or the stage, between the reigns of Charles II. 
and the present sovereign, which might not be found con- 
cerned in the clubs or other meetings which they have wit- 
nessed, particularly those of Garrick, Hogarth, and their 
contemporaries. Sir Roger de Coverley has been there, a 
person more real to us than nine-tenths of them. When in 
town he lodged in Bow Street. 

Opposite the Bedford Coffee-house a tragical scene took 
place, the particulars of which are interesting. The Earl 
of Sandwich, grandson of Charles II.'s Earl of Sandwich, 
and first Lord of the Admiralty during the North administra- 
tion, had for his mistress a Miss Ray, whom he had rendered 
as accomplished as she was handsome. Some say that she 
was the daughter of a labourer at Elstree, others of a stay- 
maker in Covent Garden. Her father is said to have had a 
shop in that way of business in Holywell Street in the Strand. 
Miss Ray was apprenticed at an early age to a mantua-maker 
in Clerkenwell Close, with whom she served her time out and 
obtained a character that did her honour. A year or two 
after the expiration of this period she was taken notice of by 
Lord Sandwich, who gave her a liberal education ; rendered 
her a proficient in his favourite arts of music and singing ; 
and made her his mistress. He was old enough to be her 
father. 

Lord Sandwich was in the habit of having plays and music 
at his house, particularly the latter. At Christmas the musical 
performance was an oratorio, for, " to speak seriously," says 
Mr. Cradock, " no man was more careful than Lord Sandwich 
not to trespass on public decorum." This gentleman, in his 

* A few days after writing this passage, we saw the shrubs making 
their appearance. 



HACKMAN, AND MISS RAY. 339 

Memoirs, has furnished us with accounts which will give a 
livelier idea of the situation of Miss Kay in his Lordship's 
house than any formal abstract of them. 

" Plays at Hinchinbrook had ceased before I had ever been in com- 
pany with Lord Sandwich, and oratorios for a week at Christmas had 
been substituted. Miss Eay, who was the first attraction, was in- 
structed in music both by Mr. Bates and Signor Giardini. Norris and 
Champness regularly attended the meetings, and there were many 
excellent amateur performers ; the Duke of Manchester's military 
band assisted, and his Lordship himself took the kettle-drums to 
animate the whole. ' Non nobis, Dornine,' was sung after dinner, and 
then catches and glees succeeded ; all was well conducted, for what- 
ever his Lordship undertook he generally accomplished, and seemed 
to have adopted the emphatic advice of Longinus, ' always to excel.' 
Miss Ray, in her situation, was a pattern of discretion ; for when a 
lady of rank, between one of the acts of the oratorio, advanced to 
converse with her, she expressed her embarrassment; and Lord Sand- 
wich, turning privately to a friend, said, ' As you are well acquainted 
with that lady, I wish you would give her a hint, that there is a 
boundary line in my family I do not wish to see exceeded; such a 
trespass might occasion the overthrow of all our music meetings.' 

" From what I have collected, Miss Eay was born in Hertfordshire, 
in 1742, and that his lordship first saw her in a shop in Tavistock 
Street where he was purchasing some neckcloths. This was all that 
Mr. Bates seemed to have ascertained, for both his lordship and the 
lady were equally cautious of communicating anything on the subject. 
From that time her education was particularly attended to, and she 
proved worthy of all the pains that were taken with her. Her voice 
was powerful and pleasing, and she has never been excelled in that 
fine air of Jephtha, ' Brighter scenes I seek above ; ' nor was she less 
admired when she executed an Italian bravura of the most difficult 
description."* 

Again : — " I did not know his lordship in early life ; but this I can 
attest, and call any contemporary to ratify who might have been 
present, that we never heard an oath, or the least profligate conver- 
sation at his lordship's table in our lives. Miss Eay's behaviour was 
particularly circumspect. Dr. Green, Bishop of Lincoln, always said, 
' I never knew so cautious a man as Lord Sandwich.' The Bishop 
came too soon once to an oratorio ; we went to receive him in the 
dining-room, but he said, ' No ; the drawing-room is full of company, 
and I will go up and take tea there.' Lord Sandwich was embarrassed, 
as he had previously objected to Lady Blake speaking to Miss Eay 
between the acts ; and as the Bishop would go up, a consequence 
ensued just as I expected. Some severe verses were sent, which 
Mr. Bates intercepted. ***** 

" The elegant Mrs. Hmchcliffe, lady of the Bishop, attended one 
night with a party. She had never seen Miss Eay before, and she 
feelingly remarked afterwards, 'I was really hurt to sit directly 
opposite to her, and mark her discreet conduct, and yet to find it 
improper to notice her. She was so assiduous to please, was so very 

* Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., 
F.S.A., vol. i., p. 117. 



S40 STORY OF LORD SANDWICH, 

excellent, yet so unassuming, I was quite charmed with her ; yet a 
seeming cruelty to her took off the pleasure of my evening.' "* 

While Miss Eay was thus situated, his lordship, through 
the medium of a neighbour, Major Eeynolds, became ac- 
quainted with a brother officer of the major's, a Captain 
Hackman, and invited him to his house. The Captain fell in 
love with Miss Eay, and Miss Eay is understood not to have 
been insensible to his passion. He was her junior by several 
years, though the disparity was nothing like the reverse one 
on the part of Lord Sandwich. Sir Herbert Croft, who wrote 
a history of their intimacy and correspondence, under the 
title of " Love and Madness," represents the attachment as 
mutual. According to his statement, Hackman urged her to 
marry him, and Miss Eay was desirous of doing so, but fearful 
of hurting the feelings of the man who had educated her, and 
who is represented as a sort of Old Eobin Gray. In this sen- 
timent, Hackman with all his passion is represented as par- 
taking. Sir Herbert's book, though founded on fact, and 
probably containing more truth than can now be ascertained, 
is considered apocryphal: and Mr. Cradock, who is as cautious 
in his way as his noble acquaintance, doubts whether any 
man was really acquainted with the particulars. All that he 
could call to mind relative to either party was, that for three 
weeks after the Captain's introduction, till his military pur- 
suits led him to Ireland, he was observed to bow to Miss Eay 
whenever she went out ; and that Miss Eay, during the latter 
part of her time at the Admiralty, did not continue to speak 
of her situation as before. " She complained," he says, " of 
being greatly alarmed by ballads that had been sung, or cries 
that had been made, directly under the windows that looked 
into the park ; and that such was the fury of the mob, that 
she did not think either herself or Lord Sandwich was safe 
whenever they went out ; and I must own that I heard some 
strange insults offered ; and that I with some of the servants 
once suddenly rushed out, but the offenders instantly ran 
away and escaped. One evening afterwards, when sitting 
with Miss Eay in the great room above stairs, she appeared 
to be much agitated, and at last said, ' she had a particular 
favour to ask of me ; that, as her situation was very preca- 
rious, and no settlement had been made upon her, she wished 
I would hint something of the kind to Lord Sandwich.' I 

* Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J. Cradock, Esq., M.A., 
F.S.A., vol. iv., p. 166. 



HACKMAN, AND MISS RAY. 341 

need not express my surprise, but I instantly assured her, 
i that no one but herself could make such a proposal, as I 
knew Lord Sandwich never gave any one an opportunity of 
interfering with him on so delicate a subject.' She urged 
that her wish was merely to relieve Lord Sandwich as to 
great expense about her ; for as her voice was then at the 
best, and Italian music was particularly her forte, she was 
given to understand she might succeed at the Opera-house, 
and as Mr. Giardini then led, and I was intimate with Mrs, 
Brooke and Mrs. Yates, she was certain of a most advan- 
tageous engagement. I then instantly conjectured who one 
of the advisers must have been ; and afterwards found that 
three thousand pounds and a free benefit had been absolutely 
held out to her, though not by the two ladies who managed 
the stage department. Whether any proposals of marriage at 
that time or afterwards were made by Mr. Hackman, I know 
not." * Be this as it may, Hackman's passion was undoubted. 
He was originally an apprentice to a merchant at Gosport ; 
was impatient of serving at the counter ; entered the army at 
nineteen, but during his acquaintance with Miss Ray, ex- 
changed the army for the church, " as a readier road to 
independence ;" and was presented to the living of Wyverton 
in Norfolk. 

Whatever was the nature of the intimacy between these 
unfortunate persons, a sudden stop appears to have been put 
to Hackman's final expectations, and he became desperate. 
By what we can gather from the accounts, Lord Sandwich, 
either to preserve her from her lover or herself, thought 
proper to put Miss Ray under the charge of a duenna. 
Hackman grew jealous either of him or of some other person; 
he was induced to believe that Miss Ray had no longer a 
regard for him, and he resolved to put himself to death. In 
this resolution a sudden impulse of frenzy included the unfor- 
tunate object of his passion. 

On the evening of the fatal day, Miss Ray went with her 
female attendant to Covent Garden Theatre to see " Love in a 
Village." Mr. Cradock thinks she had declined to inform 
Hackman how she was engaged that evening. Hackman, 
who appears to have suspected her intentions, watched her, 
and saw the carriage pass by the Cannon Coffee-house 
(Cockspur Street, Charing Cross), in which he had posted 

* Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs, by J, Cradock, Esq., M.A., 
I\S,A., vol, i., p. 143, 



312 STORY OF LORD SANDWICH, 

himself. Singularly enough, Mr. Cradock happened to be in 
the same coffee-house, and says that he wondered to see the 
carriage go by without Lord Sandwich. This looks as if 
there was more in Hackman's suspicion than can now be 
shown, Hackman followed them. 

"The ladies sat in a front box," says Mr. Cradock; "and three 
gentlemen, all connected with the Admiralty, occasionally paid their 
compliments to them ; Mr. Hackman was sometimes in the lobby, 
sometimes in an upper side box, and more than once at the Bedford 
coffee-house to take brandy and water, but still seemed unable to 
gain any information ; and I can add, as a slight circumstance, that 
in the afternoon I had myself been at the coffee-house (Cockspur 
Street, Charing Cross), and, observing the carriage pass by, had 
remarked to my friend that I wondered at seeing the ladies on their 
way to the theatre without Lord Sandwich ; that I meant to have 
dined at the Admiralty, but had been prevented ; so that it appears 
now that most of the circumstances must have been accidental. The 
dreadful consummation, however, was, that at the door of the theatre, 
directly opposite the Bedford coffee-house, Mr. Hackman suddenly 
rushed out, and as a gentleman was handing Miss Ray into the 
carriage, with a pistol he first destroyed this most unfortunate 
victim, and, though not at the time, fell a most dreadful sacrifice 
himself." * 

" Miss Ray," says the Introduction to ' Love and Madness,' " was 
coming out of Covent Garden Theatre in order to take her coach, 
accompanied by two friends, a gentleman and a lady, between whom 
she walked in the piazza. Mr. Hackman stepped up to her without 
the smallest previous menace or address, put a pistol to her head, and 
shot her instantly dead. He then fired another at himself, which, 
however, did not prove equally effectual. The ball grazed upon the 
upper part of the head, but did not penetrate sufficiently to produce 
any fatal effect ; he fell, however, and so firmly was he bent on the 
entire completion of the destruction he had meditated, that he was 
found beating his head with the utmost violence with the butt-end of 
the pistol, by Mr. Mahon, apothecary, of Covent Garden, who wrenched 
the pistol from his hand. He was carried to the Shakspeare, where 
his wound was dressed. In his pocket were found two letters ; the 
one a copy of a letter which he had written to Miss Ray, and the 
other to Frederic Booth, Esq., Craven Street, Strand. When he had 
so far recovered his faculties as to be capable of speech, he inquired 
with great anxiety concerning Miss Ray ; and being told she was 
dead, he desired her poor remains might not be exposed to the 
observation of the curious multitude. About five o'clock in the 
morning, Sir John Fielding came to the Shakspeare, and not finding 
his wounds of a dangerous nature, ordered him to Tothill Fields 
Bridewell. 

" The body of the unhappy lady was carried into the Shakspeare 
Tavern for the inspection of the coroner."f 

* Cradock, as above, p. 144. 

t Love and Madness, a Story too True, in a series of Letters, &C* 
1822, p. 11. 



343 

The whole of the circumstances connected with this catas- 
trophe are painfully dramatic. 

" The next morning," says Mr. Cradock, " I made several efforts 
before I had resolution enough to see any one of the Admiralty ; at 
last old James, the black, overwhelmed with grief, came down to me, 
and endeavoured to inform me, that when he had mentioned what had 
occurred, Lord Sandwich hastily replied, ' You know that I iorbad 
you to plague me any more about those ballads: let them sing or say 
whatever they please about me ! ' ' Indeed, my lord,' I said, ' I am 
not speaking of any ballads; it is all too true.' Others then came in, 
and all was a scene of the utmost horror and distress. His lordship 
for a while stood, as it were, petrified, till, suddenly seizing a candle, 
he ran up-stairs and threw himself on the bed ; and in an agony 
exclaimed, ' Leave me for a while to myself — I could have borne any- 
thing but this ! ' The attendants remained for a considerable time at 
the top of the staircase, till his lordship rang the bell and ordered that 
they should all go to bed. They assured me that at that time they 
believed fewer particulars were known at the Admiralty than over 
half the town besides; indeed all was confusion and astonishment; and 
even now I am doubtful whether Lord Sandwich was ever aware that 
there was any connection between Mr. Hackman and Miss Ray. His 
lordship continued for a day or two at the Admiralty, till, at the 
earnest request of those about him, he at last retired for a short time 
to a friend's house in the neighbourhood of Richmond."* 

Hackman was executed at Tyburn. He confessed at the 
bar that he had intended to kill himself, but he protested that 
but for a momentary frenzy he should not have destroyed 
her, " who was more dear to him than life." It appears, 
however, that he was furnished with two pistols ; which told 
against him on that point. 

" On Friday," says Boswell, "I had been present at the trial of the 
unfortunate Mr. Hackman, who, in a fit of frantic jealous love, had 
shot Miss Ray, the favourite of a nobleman. Johnson, in whose com- 
pany I dined to-day, with some other friends, was much interested by 
my account of what passed, and particularly with his prayer for 
mercy of heaven. He said in a solemn, fervent tone, 'I hope he shall 
find mercy.' In talking of Hackman, Johnson argued as Judge 
Blackstone had done, that his being furnished with two pistols was a 
proof that he meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk said, * No ; 
for that every wise man who intended to shoot himself, took two 

pistols, that he might be sure of doing it at once. Lord 's cook 

shot himself with one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. 

Mr. , who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because 

they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself, and then 
he ate three buttered muffins for breakfast before shooting himself, 
knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion ; he had two 
charged pistols ; one was found lying charged upon the table by him, 
after he had shot himself with the other.' ' Well (said Johnson with 

* Cradock's Memoirs, vol. iv„p. 166, 



344: STORY OF LORD SANDWICH, 

an air of triumph), you see here one pistol was sufficient.' Beauclerk 
replied smartly, ' Because it happened to kill him.' "* 

It is impossible to settle this point. The general impres- 
sion will be against Hackman ; but, perhaps, the second 
pistol, though not designed for himself, might have been for 
Miss Eay. His victim was buried at Elstree, where she had 
been a lowly and happy child, running about with her 
blooming face, and little thinking what trouble it was to cost 
her. 

In Mr. Cradock's book we hear again of Lord Sandwich 
on whom this story has thrown an interest. On his return 
from Eichmond, Mr. Cradock went to see him, and was ad- 
mitted into the study where the portrait of Miss Eay, an 
exact resemblance, still hung over the chimney-piece. " I 
fear," says Mr. Cradock, " I rather started on seeing it, which 
Lord Sandwich perceiving, he instantly endeavoured to speak 
of some unconnected subject ; but he looked so ill, and I 
felt so much embarrassed, that as soon as I possibly could, I 
most respectfully took my leave." 

" His lordship rarely dined out anywhere ; but after a great length 
of time he was persuaded by our open-hearted friend, Lord Walsing- 
hani, to meet a select party at his house. All passed off exceedingly 
well for a while, and his lordship appeared more cheerful than could 
have been expected; but after coffee, as Mr. and Mrs. Bates were 
present, something was mentioned about music, and one of the company 
requested that Mrs. Bates would favour them with, ' Shepherds, I 
have lost my love.' This was, unfortunately, the very air that had 
been introduced by Miss Eay at Hinchinbrook, and had been always 
called for by Lord Sandwich. Mr. Bates immediately endeavoured to 
prevent its being sung, and by his anxiety increased the distress, but 
it was too late to pause. Lord Sandwich for a while struggled to over- 
come his feelings, but they were so apparent that at last he went up 
Mrs. Walsingham, and in a very confused manner said, he hoped she 
would excuse his not staying longer at that time ; but that he had 
just recollected some pressing business, which required his return to 
the Admiralty, and bowing to all the company, rather hastily left the 
room. Some other endeavours to amuse him afterwards did not 
prove much more successful."! 

His lordship afterwards lived in retirement, and died in 1792. 
It does not appear that Lord Sandwich's disinclination to 
be amused arose from excessive sensibility. Mr. Cradock 
represents him in his political character as bearing "daily 
insults and misrepresentations as a stoic rather than an 
injured and feeling man," and he describes his calmness of 

* Boswell, vol. iii., p. 414. 
f Cradock's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 146, 



HACKMAN, AND MISS RAY. 345 

mind in retirement, and his enjoyment of solitude. The 
same writer who calls him " a steady friend," speaks highly 
of his classical attainments, and his accomplishments as a 
modern linguist and an amateur, to which he added great 
caution (as the Bishop said), a love of " badgering," and an 
incompetency for the personal graces. When he played his 
part in the oratorios, it was on the kettle-drum. He related 
the following anecdote of himself. 

"When I was in Paris, I had a dancing-master; the man was very 
civil, and on taking leave of him, I offered him any service in London. 
'Then,' said the man, bowing, 'I should take it as a particular 
favour, if your lordship would never tell any one of whom you have 
learned to dance.' " 

"Hurd once said to me," adds Mr. Cradock, "there is aline in the 
Heroic Epistle that I do not at all comprehend the meaning of ; but 
you can, perhaps, acquaint me. It alludes to Lord Sandwich, I sup- 
pose; but one word, shambles, I cannot guess at, — 

' See Jemmy Twitcher shambles — stop, stop, thief.' 
' That, sir,' said I, 'alludes to his lordship's shambling gait/ "* 

Upon the whole we have no doubt that he was a cold and 
superficial person, and that Miss Eay would not have been 
sorry had Hackman succeeded in retaining her heart ; for, as 
to Hackman, the great cause of his mischance, according to 
the passage in Boswell, appears to have been the violence of 
his temper, — the common secret of most of these outrageous 
love stories. He was not a bad-hearted man, merely selfish 
and passionate, otherwise he would have meditated no 
mischief against himself. 

" He that beats or knocks out brains, 
The devil's in him, if he feigns," 

says the poet. But he was weak, wilful, and, by his 
readiness to become a clergyman from a Captain, perhaps not 
very principled. The truest love is the truest benevolence ; it 
acquires an infinite patience out of the very excess of its 
suffering, and is content to merge its egotism in the idea of 
the beloved object. He that does not know this, does not 
know what love is, whatever he may know of passion. 

In Henrietta Street Mrs. Clive once resided. She was the 
favourite Nell of the stage in the " Devil to Pay," and similar 
characters ; and, according to Garrick, there was something 
of the Devil to Pay in all her stage life. She might have 
been Macklin's sister for humour, judgment, and a sturdiness 
of purpose amounting to violence, not unmixed with gene- 
* Uradoek's Memoirs, vol. iv., p. 166. 



o4b HENRIETTA STREET, 

rosity. The latter part of her life she spent in retirement at 
Strawberry Hill, where she was a neighbour and friend to 
Horace Walpole, whose effeminacy she helped to keep on the 
alert. It always seems to us, as if she had been the man of 
the two, and he the woman. 

Henrietta Street was most probably named after the queen 
of Charles I., and James Street after her father-in-law. In 
both these streets lived the egregions almanack-maker, and 
quack doctor, the butt of the wits of his time. He died in 
Salisbury Street, Strand, which is the scene of his posthumous 
behaviour, — his pretending to be alive, when BickerstafF 
had declared him dead. Partridge had foretold the death of 
the French king. Swift, under the name of BickerstafF, 
foretold Partridge's, and, when the time came, insisted he was 
dead. Partridge gravely insisted that he was alive. The wits, 
the friends of Swift, maintained the contrary, wondering at the 
dead man's impudence : and the whole affair was hawked 
about the streets, to the ludicrous distress of poor Partridge, 
who not only highly resented it, and repeatedly advertised 
his existence, but was fairly obliged to give up almanack- 
making. " He persisted, indeed, sturdily in his refusal to be 
buried till 1715 : but he actually died as an almanack- 
maker in 1709, his almanack for that year being the last, 
and the only one he wrote after this odd misfortune befell 
him." * 

The following are specimens of the way in which Partridge 
resisted his death and burial. In the almanack for 1709, he 
says, 

" You may remember there was a paper published predicting my 
death on the 29 th of March at night, 1708, and after that day was 
passed the same villain told the world I was dead, and howl died, and 
that he was with me at the time of my death. I thank God, by whose 
mercy I have my being, that I am still alive, and, excepting my age, 
as well as ever I was in my life, as I was on that 29th of March. 
And that paper was said to be done by one BickerstafF, Esq., but that 
was a sham name, it was done by an impudent lying fellow. But his 
prediction did not prove true. What will he say to excuse that? for 
the fool had considered the star of my nativity, as he said. Why, the 
truth is, he will be hard put to it to find a salvo for his honour. It 
was a bold touch, and he did not know but it might prove true. 

" Feb. 1709. Much lying news dispersed about this time, and also 
scandalous pamphlets; perhaps we may have some knavish scribbler, 



* Account of John Partridge, in the Appendix to the Tatler, vol, iv, 
p. 613, 



PARTRIDGE, THE ALMANACK-MAKER. — KING STREET. 347 

a second Bickerstaff, or a rascal under that name for that villain, &c. 
It is a cheat, and he a knave that did it, &c. 

" Whereas, it has been industriously given out by Bickerstaff, Esq., 
and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that John 
Partridge is dead; this may inform all his loving countrymen, that, 
blessed be God, he is still living in health, and they are knaves who 
reported otherwise. • Merlinus Liberatus, with an almanack [printed 
by allowance for 1710]. By John Partridge, student in Physic and 
Astrology.' " 

In James Street, towards the begining of the last century, 
lived a mysterious lady, who will remind the reader of the 
Catholic lady in the " Fortunes of Nigel." 

" In the month of March 1720," says Mr. Malcolm, " an unknown 
lady died at her lodgings in James Street, Covent Garden. She is 
represented to have been a middle-sized person, with dark-brown 
hair, and very beautiful features, and mistress of every accomplish- 
ment peculiar to ladies of the first fashion and respectability. Her 
age appeared to be between thirty and forty. Her circumstances 
were affluent, and she possessed the richest trinkets of her sex, gene- 
rally set with diamonds. A John Ward, Esq., of Hackney, published 
many particulars relating to her in the papers; and amongst others, 
that a servant had been directed by her to deliver him a letter after 
her death ; but as no servant appeared, he felt himself required to 
notice those circumstances, in order to acquaint her relations of her 
decease, which occurred suddenly after a masquerade, where she 
declared she had conversed with the King, and it was remembered 
that she had been seen in the private apartments of Queen Anne ; 
though after the Queen's demise she had lived in obscurity. This 
unknown arrived in London from Mansfield, in 1714, drawn by six 
horses. She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that, 
her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct ; adding, 
that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recom- 
mendation. 

" It was conjectured that she might be the daughter of a Eoman 
Catholic, who had consigned her to a convent, whence a brother had 
released her and supported her in privacy. She was buried at 
St. Paul's, Covent Garden."* 

Perhaps she had some connection with Queen Anne's 
brother, the Pretender. 

In King Street lived the father of Arne and Mrs. Cibber. 
He was an upholsterer, and is said to have been the original 
of the Quid-nunc in the Tatler, and the hero of Murphy's 
farce of the Upholsterer, or, What News? His name is 
connected also with that of the four "Indian Kings," as they 
were called, who came into this country in Queen Anne's 
time, to ask her assistance against the French in Canada. 

* Anecdotes, Manners, and Customs of London during the Eighteenth 
Century, vol. i., p. 407, 



348 THE FOUR INDIAN KINGS. 

" They were clothed and entertained," says a note in the ' Tatler, 
" at the public expense, being lodged, while they continued in London, 
in an handsome apartment," perhaps in the house of Mr. Arne, as 
may be inferred from ' Tatler,' 1 55, and note. Certainly their land- 
lord was an upholsterer in Covent Garden, in a new street, which 
seems at that time to have received the name of King Street, which 
it retains to this day, in common with many other streets so called, in 
honour of Charles II. The figures of these four Indian kings or chiefs 
are still preserved in the British Museum. The names and titles of 
their Majesties are recorded there and in the * Annals of Queen Anne/ 
but with the following differences from the account of them in this 
paper : Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Prow, and Sa Ga Yean Qua Prah Ion, 
of the Maquas ; — Elow Oh Kaom, and Oh Nee Yeath Ion No Prow, of 
the river Sachem, and the Ganajoh-hore Sachem. On the 18th of 
April 1710, according to Salmon, on the 19th according to Boyer, 
these four illustrious personages were conveyed in two of the Queen's 
coaches to St. James's, by Sir Charles Cotterel, master of the cere- 
monies, and introduced to their public audience by the Duke of 
Shrewsbury, then Lord Chamberlain. They made a speech by an 
interpreter, which Major Pidgeon, an officer who came over with them 
from America, read in English to her Majesty. " They had (they 
said) with one consent hung up the kettle and taken up the hatchet, 
in token of their friendship to their great queen and her children, and 
had been, on the other side of the great water, a strong wall of secu- 
rity to their great queen's children, even to the loss of their best men. 
For the truth of what they affirmed, and their written proposals, they 
referred to Colonel Scuyder and Colonel Nicholson, whom they 
called, in their language, Brother Queder, and Anadgargaux, and, 
speaking of Colonel Vetch, they named him Anadiasia. They said 
they always considered the French as men of falsehood, and rejoiced 
in the prospect of the reduction of Canada; after which they should 
have free hunting, and a great trade with their great queen's chil- 
children , and as a token of the sincerity of the six nations, in the 
name of all, they presented their great queen with the belts of 
wampum. They concluded their speech with recommending their 
very hard case to their great queen's gracious consideration, expres- 
sing their hopes of her favour, and requesting the mission of more of 
her children to reinforce and to instruct, for they had got, as they 
said, since their alliance with her children, some knowledge of the 
Saviour of the world. The curious may see this speech at full length 
in the 'Annals of Queen Anne,' year 9th, p. 191, etseq.,%\o. On 
the same day, according to Boyer, a royal messenger of the Emperor of 
Morocco, Elhadge Guzman, was likewise introduced by the Duke of 
Shrewsbury to a private audience, and delivered letters to the Queen 
from Mula Ishmael, his master; the same emperor, probably, who 
sent an ambassador to our court in 1706, mentioned in the 'Tatler,' 
No. 130, and note, vol. iii., p. 44. The Indian Kings continued about 
a fortnight longer in London, during which time they were hospi- 
tably entertained by some of the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, 
by the Duke of Ormond, and several persons of distinction. They 
were carried to see Dr. Elamstead's house and the mathematical 
instruments in Greenwich Park, and entertained with the sight of the 
principal curiosities in and about the metropolis ; then conveyed 
to Portsmouth through Hampton Court and Windsor,, and emba,rke4 



ARNE, AND HIS FATHER. 349 

v/ith Colonel Frances Nicholson, commander-in-chief of the forces 
appointed to the American service, on board the Dragon, Captain 
Martin, Commodore, who, with about eighteen sail under his convoy, 
sailed from Spithead on the 18th of May, and landed their Majesties 
safe at Boston, in New England, July 15th, 1710."* 

Their names are like a set of yawns and sneezes. 

Young Arne, who was born in King Street, was a 
musician against his father's will, and practised in the garret, 
on a muffled spinnet, when the family had gone to bed. He 
was sent to Eton, which was probably of use to him in con- 
firming his natural refinement, but nothing could hinder his 
devoting himself to the art. It is said the old man had no 
suspicion of his advancement in it, till, going to a concert 
one evening, he was astonished to see his son exalted, bow in 
hand, as the leader. Seeing the praises bestowed on him, he 
suffered him to become what nature designed him for. Arne 
was the most flowing, Italian-like musician of any we have 
had in England ; not capable of the grandeur and profound 
style of Purcell, but more sustained, continuous, and seduc- 
tive. His " Water parted " is a stream of sweetness ; his 
song, "When Daisies pied" is truly Shaksperian, full of arch- 
ness and originality. Like many of his profession, who feel 
much more than they reflect, he became, in some measure, 
the victim of his sense of beauty, being excessively addicted 
to women. His sister, Mrs. Cibber, whose charming perfor- 
mances on the stage we have before noticed, did not escape 
without the reputation of a like tendency : but she had a 
bad husband (the notorious Theophilus Cibber) ; and on the 
occasion that gave rise to it, is understood to have been the 
victim of his mercenary designs. 

Southampton Street we have noticed in speaking of the 
Strand. Godfrey's, the chemist's, in this street, is an estab- 
lishment of old standing, as may be seen by the inscription 
over the door. A hundred years ago, Mr. Ambrose Godfrey, 
who lived here, proposed to extinguish fire by a new method 
of " explosion and suffocation ; " that is to say, a mixture of 
water and gunpowder. Tavistock Street (where Lord Sand- 
wich first saw Miss Ray) was once the great emporium of 
millinery and mantua- making. Macklin died there. He 
lived many years in Wyld Street. In Maiden Lane, Voltaire 
lodged, when in England, at the sign of the White Peruke, 
probably the house of a fashionable French peruquicr. la 

* Tatler, ut supra, vol. iii., p. 397. 



350 MAIDEN LANE — VOLTAIRE. 

" Swift's Works" (vol. xx. of the duodecimo edition, p. 294), 
there is a letter to him, in English, by Voltaire, and dated 
from this house. The English seems a little too perfect. 
There is another following it which looks more authentic. 
But there is no doubt that Voltaire, while in England, made 
himself such a master of the language, as to be able to write 
in it with singular correctness for a foreigner. He was then 
young. He had been imprisoned in the Bastile for a libel ; 
came over here, on his release ; procured many subscriptions 
for the "Henriade;" published in English "An Essay on 
Epic Poetry," and remained some years, during which he 
became acquainted with the principal men of letters — Pope, 
Congreve, and Young. He is said to have talked so inde- 
cently at Pope's table (probably no more than was thought 
decent by the belles in France), that the good old lady, the 
poet's mother, was obliged to retire. Objecting, at Lord 
Chesterfield's table, to the allegories of Milton, Young is said 
to have accosted him in the well-known couplet : — 
Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
Thou seem'st a Milton, with his Death and Sin. 

But this story has been doubted. Young, though not so thin, 
was as witty and profligate in his way as Voltaire : for, even 
when affecting a hermit-like sense of religion, he was a servile 
flatterer and preferment-hunter. The secret of the gloomy 
tone in his " Night-Thoughts" was his not having too much, 
and his missing a bishopric. This is the reason why the 
"Night-Thoughts" are overdone, and have not stood their 
ground. Voltaire left England with such a mass of subscrip- 
tions for his " Henriade" as laid the foundation of his fortunes^ 
and with great admiration of English talent and genius, par- 
ticularly that of Newton and Locke, which, with all his 
insinuations against our poetry, he took warm pains to extend, 
and never gave up. He was fond to the last of showing he 
had not forgotten his English. Somebody telling him that 
Johnson had spoken well of his talents, he said, in English, 
" He is a clever fellow ;" but the gentleman observing that 
the doctor did not think well of his religion, he added, " a 
superstitious dog." 

During his residence in Maiden Lane, there is a story of 
Voltaire's having been beset, in one of his walks, by the 
people, who ridiculed him as a Frenchman. He got upon the 
steps of a door-way and harangued them in their own language 
in praise of English liberty and the nation ; upon which, the 



LONG ACRE, AND ITS MUG 1IOUSKS. 351 

story adds, they hailed him as a fine fellow, and carried him 
to his lodgings on their shoulders. The treatment of foreigners 
at this time in the streets of London (and every foreigner was 
a Frenchman) was very much the reverse of what the inhabi- 
tants took it for. Thanks to the progress of knowledge, 
nations have learnt to understand one another's common cause 
better, and to suspect that the most ridiculous thing they 
could do is to forget it. 

Long Acre is a portion of the seven acres before men- 
tioned. The great plague of London began there in some 
goods brought over from Holland ; but as that calamity 
made its principal ravages in the city, we shall speak of it 
under another head. Daring the battles of the Whigs and 
Tories, Long Acre was famous for its Mug-houses, where 
beer-drinking clubs were held, and politics " sung or said." 
Cheapside was another place of celebrity for these meetings. 
There is a description of them in a Journey through England 
in 1724, quoted by Mr. Malcolm in his "Manners and 
Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century." " Gentle- 
men, lawyers, and tradesmen," says the account, " used to 
meet in a great room, seldom under a hundred." 

" They had a president, who sat in an arm-chair some steps higher 
than the rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order. A 
harp played all the time at the lower end of the room, and every now 
and then one or other of the company rose and entertained the rest 
with a song, and (by the by) some were good masters. Here was 
nothing drank but ale, and every gentleman had his separate mug, 
which he chalked on the table where he sat as it was brought in; and 
every one retired when he pleased, as from a coffee-house. 

" The rooms were always so diverted with songs, and drinking 
from one table to another one another's healths, that there was no 
room for anj-thing that could sour conversation. 

" One was obliged to be there by seven to get room, and after ten 
the company were for the most part gone. 

" This was a winter's amusement, agreeable enough to a stranger 
for once or twice, and he was well diverted with the different humours 
when the mugs overflow. 

" On King George's accession to the throne, the Tories had so much 
the better of the friends to the Protestant succession, that they gained 
the mobs on all public days to their side. This induced this set of 
gentlemen to establish mug-houses in all the corners of this great city, 
for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loyalty 
to the Protestant succession, and to be ready upon all tumults to join 
their forces for the suppression of the Tory mobs. Many anenconnter 
they had, and many were the riots, till at last the Parliament was 
obliged by law to put an end to this city strife, which had this good 
effect, that, on pulling down the mug-houses in Salisbury Court, for 



852 prior. 

which some boys were hanged on this Act, the city has not "been 
troubled with them since."* 

One of the mistresses whom Prior celebrates, under the 
name of Chloe, and compares to Yenns and Diana, lived in 
Long Acre, and was the wife, some say, of a common soldier, 
others of a cobbler, others of the keeper of an ale-house. 
Perhaps she was all these, or there were three mistresses 
whose alliances were confounded. Spence says that the ale- 
house keeper was the first husband, and the cobbler the 
second. "Everybody knows," says Pope, "what a wretch 
she was." And again : — " Prior was not a right good man. 
He used to bury himself, for whole days and nights together, 
with a poor mean creature, and often drank hard. He turned 
from a strong Whig (which he had been when most with 
Lord Halifax) to a violent Tory ; and did not care to converse 
with any Whigs after, any more than Rowe did with Tories. "f 
" I have been assured," says Pope's friend, Eichardson, the 
painter, " that Prior, after having spent the evening with 
Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a 
pipe, and drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and 
his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed.' ; J After the 
poet's death, Arbuthnot says something to the same effect ; 
but we forget what. 

None of the wits of that time seem to have known much 
about love as a sentiment. There is no end of the misconcep- 
tions of what is called love. Prior would probably have 
retorted upon Pope, that his own taste was not very delicate ; 
and upon Arbuthnot, that the doctor was a sensualist in his 
way, and of a lower order. § He would have quoted Pro- 
pertius, Raphael, and others, for the impartiality of his taste ; 
and the woman, though in low life, might have had wit and 
beauty. The secret of these inequalities has been explained 
by Fielding. || 

Sir Joshua Reynolds lived successively in St. Martin's 
Lane, and on the north side of Great Newport Street, before 

* Anecdotes, Manners, &c. ut supra, vol. iii., p. 239. 

f Spence, ut supra, pp. 2. and 49. 

t Johnson's Lite of Prior. 

§ Arbuthnot was a lover of the table, and is understood to have 
embittered his end by it ; a charge which has been brought against 
Pope. Perhaps there is not one that might be brought with more 
safety against ninety men out of a hundred. 

U Journey to the Next World. 



SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. — ST. MARTIN'S LANE. — HOGARTH. 35S 

he settled finally in Leicester Square. In Newport Street was 
born the celebrated Home Tooke, the son of a poulterer in the 
adjoining market ; which made him say, that his father was 
a " Turkey merchant." He was, perhaps, the hardest-headed 
man that ever figured in the union of literature and politics ; 
meaning, by that epithet, the power to discuss, and impene- 
trability to objection. He died at his house at Wimbledon, 
and was buried at Ealing. His history trenches too closely 
on the politics of our own day, to allow us to expatiate upon 
it in a work expressly devoted to the past. 

St. Martin's Lane (see Charing Cross, for a notice of the 
church,) was once as famous for artists as Newman Street has 
been since. In Salisbury Court and in St. Martin's Lane the 
Royal Academy may be said to have originated, for in those 
places successively its original members first came together as 
a society established by themselves. Perhaps there was not a 
single artist, contemporary with Sir Joshua, who was uncon- 
nected with St. Martin's Lane, either as a lodger, student, 
or visitor. Old Slaughter's coffee-house, in the same lane, 
became celebrated on the same account, and as a resort of the 
contemporary wits, especially Hogarth, who may be said to 
have amalgamated in his works the wit and the painter. 
St. Martin's Lane and Leicester Square are the head-quarters 
of the memory of English art. In the annals of the former 
we meet with the names of Wilson and Gainsborough : in the 
latter flourished and died Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square was on the eastern 
side, four doors from Sydney's Alley.* It was there he kept 
a handsome table, and was visited by Johnson and Goldsmith, 
and had the whole round of the fashionable world fluttering 
before him, and steadying itself to become immortal in his 
pictures : if, indeed, immortal they are to be, in the ordinary 
meaning of that word ; for, out of certain misgivings, which 
perhaps argued a want of perfect claim to that destiny, he 
dabbled in experiments upon colours which have failed ; and 
his pictures, though but of yesterday, already look old and 
worn out, while Titian's are as blooming as Apollo. 

Hogarth, the greatest name in English art, lived in one of 
the two houses which now form Sabloniere's hotel. It was 
the one to the north. He was a little bustling man, with a 
face more lively than refined, a sort of knowing jockey look ; 

* The house was probably on the site now occupied by the south- 
east corner of New Coventry Street. 

A A 



354 



LEICESTER SQUARE. 



and was irritable and egotistical, but not ungenerous 

a painter, he did what no man ever did before or since — 

brought out the absurdities of artificial life, 

" Showed vice her own features, scorn her own image," 
and fairly painted even goods and chattels with a meaning ! 
His intentions were less profound than his impulses ; that is 
to say, he sometimes had an avowed common-place in view, 
as in the instance of the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, 
while the execution of it was full of much higher things and 
profounder humanities. As to the rest, if ever there was a 
wit on canvass, it was he. To take one instance alone, his 
spider's v. eb over the poors box is a union of remote ideas, 
coalescing but too perfectly.* 

Leicester Square, formerly Leicester Fields, was not built 
upon till i owards the restoration of Charles II. It took its 
name from a family mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, 
which stood on the north side, on the site of the present houses 
and of Leicester Place. 




RESIDENCE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 

" It was for a short time," says Pennant, " the residence of Elizabeth, 
daughter of James I., the titular Queen of Bohemia, who, on February 
13th, 1661, here ended her unfortunate life. It has been tenanted for 

* For masterly criticisms on Hogarth, see the " Works of Charles 
Lamb," vol. ii., p. 88, and the "Picture Galleries of England," p. 181. 



SIR ISAAC NEWTOS. B55 

a great number of years. It was successively the poun ting-place of 
princes. The late King [George II.], when Prince of Wales, after he 
had quarrelled with his father, lived here several years. His son 
Frederic followed his example, succeeded him in his house, and in it 
finished his days." 

" Behind Leicester House," the same author informs us, " stood, in 
1658, the Military-yard, founded by Henry Prince of Wales, the 
spirited son of our peaceful James. M. Faubert afterwards kept' here 
his academy for riding and other gentlemanlike exercises, in the reign 
of Charles H., which, in later years, was removed to Swallow Street, 
opposite the end of Conduit Street. Part is retained for the purpose 
of a riding-house ; the rest is converted into a workhouse for the 
parish of St. James's." * 

But the glory of the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields is 
in St. Martin's Street, where the house is still remaining which 
was occupied by the great Newton. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CHARING CROSS AND WHITEHALL. 

Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church— Statue of Charles I. 
—Execution of Regicides— Ben Jonson— Wallingford House, now 
the Admiralty— Villiers, Duke of Buckingham ; Sir Walter Scott's 
Account of him— Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his Death- 
Charles's Horse a Satirist — Locket's Ordinary— Sir George Etherege. 
— Prior and his Uncle's Tavern— Thomson— Spring Gardens — 
Mrs. Centlivre— Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c, formerly 
Hedge Lane— The Wits and the Bailiffs— Suffolk Street— Swift 
and Miss Vanhomrigh— Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occa- 
sioned—Scotland Yard— Pleasant Advertisement— Beau Fielding, 
and his Eccentricities— Vanbrugh— Desperate Adventure of Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury. 

^N the reign of Edward L, on the country road 

from London to Westminster, stood the hamlet 

of Charing ; a rustic spot, containing a few 

houses, and the last cross set up by that 

Prince in honour of the resting-places of his 

wife's body on its way to interment in the 

Abbey. The Cross was originally of wood, 

but afterwards of stone. The reader may see 

it in the old map of London by Aggas. He 

will there observe, that towards the beginning of Elizabeth's, 

reign Charing Cross was united with London on the Strand 

side, and at little intervals with Whitehall ; but Spring Gar- 

* Pennant, p. 120. 

A A 2 




S56 



CHARING CROSS. 



dens was then and long after what its name implies ; and, iii 
the reign of Charles II., Hedge Lane (now Whitcomb Street) 
and the Haymarket were still real lanes and passages into 
the fields. In Elizabeth's time, you might set out from the 
site of the present Pall-mall, and, leaving St. Giles in the 
Fields on the right hand, walk all the way to Hampstead 
without encountering perhaps a dwelling-place. Lovers 
plucked flowers in Cranbourne Alley, and took moonlight 
walks in St. James's market. 

On this spot, in Dr. Johnson's opinion, is to be found the 
fullest "tide of human existence" in the metropolis. We 
know not how that may be at present when the tide is so full 
everywhere ; but Charing Cross has long been something the 
reverse of a rural village, and is now exhibiting one of the 
newest and grandest evidences of an improving metropolis. 




THE VILLAGE OP CHARING FROM AGGAS S MAP. 



By way of north front, the Mews (formerly the mews of the 
King's falcons) has given way to a sorry palace for the Fine 
Arts ; on the west is a handsome edifice including the new 
college of Physicians ; on the east St. Martin's church has 
obtained its long desired opening : and in the midst of these 
buildings and of the Strand-end is a new square, named after 
the greatest of our naval victories, adorned with a column 
surmounted by their hero, and disgraced by a couple of shabby 



357 

fountains. Here also is an equestrian statue of George the 
Fourth. What for? 

" In the reign of Henry VIII.," says Pennant, " speaking of St 
Martin's, " a small church was built here at the King's expense, by 
reason of the poverty of the parishioners, who possibly were at that 
period very poor. In 1607 it was enlarged because of the increase of 
buildings. In 1721 it was found necessary to take the whole down, 
and in five years from that time this magnificent temple was com- 
pleted at the expense of near thirty-seven thousand pounds. This is 
the best performance of Gibbs, the architect of the Radcliffe Library. 
The steeple is far the most elegant of any of that style which I named 
the pepper-box ; and with which (I beg pardon of the good people of 
Glasgow) I marked their boasted steeple of St. Andrew."* 

Our lively biographer seems chiefly to admire the steeple 
of this church. The Corinthian portico, we believe, is the 
usual object of praise. Both of them may deserve praise 
separately ; nor, indeed, will their size and situation allow 
them to be regarded with indifference in conjunction ; but the 
elevation of the steeple on the neck of the church, or without 
any apparent or proper base to rest upon, is a fault not to be 
denied ; and Mr. Pennant perhaps would not have been in the 
wrong, had he found an ill name for steeples in general, as 
well as for the species which he " peppered." Steeples, how- 
ever noble, and porticoes, however Greek, can never truly 
coalesce. The finest steeple with a portico to it is but an 
excrescence and an anomaly, a horn growing out of the 
church's neck. The Italians felt this absurdity so much, 
that they have often made a separate building of the steeple, 
converting it into a beautiful tower aloof from the church, as 
in the instances of the famous Hanging Tower in Pisa, and 
the Campanile in Florence. Suppose a shaft like the Monu- 
ment, in a space near St. Martin's church, and the church 
itself a proper building with a portico, like St. Paul's Covent 
Garden, and you have an improvement in the Italian style. 
The best thing to say for 

sharped steeples high shot up in air 

(as Spenser calls them) is, that they seem to be pointing to 
heaven, or running up into space like an intimation of inter- 
minability. An idea of this kind is supposed to have given 
rise to them. But they always have a meagre, incongruous 
look, considered in their union with the body to which they 
are attached. Their best appearance is at a distance, and 
when they are numerous, as in the view of a great city ; but 
* fage 143 ? 



358 STATUE OF CHARLES I. 

even then, how inferior are they to the massive dignity of 
such towers as those of Westminster Abbey, or to a dome 
like that of St. Paul's ! 

The origin of the word Charing is unknown. The cross 
was destroyed during the Eeformation. The spot where it 
stood is occupied by the statue of Charles I. originally the 
property of the Earl of Arundel, for whom it was cast by Le 
Sceur in 1633. It was not placed in its present situation till 
the decline of the reign of Charles II. ■ The pedestal is the 
work of Grinling Gibbons. The statue had been condemned 
by Parliament to be sold and broken in pieces ; " but John 
Kiver, the brazier, who purchased it," says Pennant, " having 
more taste or more loyalty than his masters, buried it unmu- 
tilated and showed to them some broken pieces of brass in 
token of his obedience. M. D'Archenholz gives a diverting 
anecdote of this brazier, and says that he cast a vast number 
of handles of knives and forks in brass, which he sold as made 
of the broken statue. They were bought with great eager- 
ness by the royalists, from affection to their monarch ; by the 
rebels as a mark of triumph over the murdered sovereign."* 
The sovereign now faces Whitehall as if in triumph : yet 
behind the Banquetting house lurks a statue of another of 
this unfortunate race, who lost his throne for attempting to 
renew the dictatorial spirit which cost his ancestor his head. 
The omission of the horse's girth in this statue his been 
thought a singular instance of forgetfulness in the artist. But 
it is hardly possible he could have forgotten it. Most likely 
he took a poetical license, and rejected what might have hurt 
the symmetry of his outline. 

Charles's memory, like his life, was destined to be connected 
with tragedies. On this spot, before the statue was erected, a 
number of the regicides were executed with tortures ; and, 
till of late years, it was a place for the pillory. Harrison 
died there, Scrope, Colonel Jones, Hugh Peters, and others of 
those extraordinary men, who, in welcoming a bloody death, 
gave the last undoubted proofs that they were real patriots as 
well as bigots. The spirit in which they died (bold and in- 
vincible, though in the very glow and loquacity evincing that 
lingering love of life which is so affecting to one's own mor- 
tality,) had such an effect on the public, that the king was 
advised not to have any more such executions near the court, 

* Pennant, p. 112. He quotes Archenholz's Tableau d'Angleterre ? 
,183, 



EXECUTION OF REGICIDES. 359 

and the scaffold was accordingly removed to Tyburn. A 
ghastly story is related of Harrison ; — that after he was cut 
down alive (according to his sentence), and had his bowels 
removed and burnt before his face by the executioner, he rose 
up and gave the man a box on the ear. He had behaved 
with great patience before this half-death ; so that there 
appears to have been something of delirium in this action, — 
the action, perhaps, of a being feeling himself to be no longer 
under the ordinary condition of his species. 

The particular sort of religious enthusiasm evinced by 
these men is now as obsolete as some of the absurdities which 
they fought against, and as others which they would have 
upheld ; but there are passages of lasting interest in the 
account of their last moments, which the reader will perhaps 
expect to see. 

As Harrison was going to suffer, " one in derision called to 
him and said, l Where is your Good Old Cause ? ' He with a 
cheerful smile clapt his hand on his breast, and said ' Here it 
is, and I am going to seal it with my blood ? ' And when he 
came to the sight of the gallows, he was transported with joy, 
and his servant asked him how he did ; he answered * Never 
better in my life.' His servant told him, * Sir, there is a 
crown of glory ready prepared for you.' ' O yes,' said he, 

* I see.' When he was taken off the sledge, the hangman 
desired him to forgive him. ' I do forgive thee,' said he, 

* with all my heart, as it is a sin against me ;' and told him 
he wished him all happiness. And further said, ' Alas, poor 
man, thou dost it ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin 
may not be laid to thy charge ! ' And putting his hand into 
his pocket gave him all the money he had, and so parting with 
his servant, hugging of him in his arms, he went up the ladder 
with an undaunted countenance. 

" The people observing him to tremble in his hands and legs, he, 
taking notice of it, said : — 

" * Gentlemen, by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that 
some do think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands 
and knees ; I tell you no, but it is by reason of much blood I have 
lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which 
caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves; I have had it this 
twelve years: I speak this to the praise and glory of God; he hath 
carried me above the fear of death ; and I value not my life, because 
I go to my Father, and am assured I shall take it again. 

" ' Gentlemen, take notice, that for being instrumental in that 
cause and interest of the Son of God, which hath been pleaded amongst 
us, and which God hath witnessed to my appeals and wonderful 



360 EXECUTION OF REGICIDES. 

victories I am brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I 
had ten thousand lives, I could freely and cheerfully lay them down 
all, to witness to this matter.' "* 

The time of Colonel Jones's departure being come " this 
aged gentleman," says the account, " was drawn in one 
sledge with his aged companion Scroope, whose grave and 
graceful countenances, accompanied with courage and cheer- 
fulness, caused great admiration and compassion in the 
spectators, as they passed along the streets to Charing Cross, 
the place of their execution ; and, after the executioner had 
done his part upon three others that day he was so drunk 
with blood, that, like one surfeited, he grew sick at stomach ; 
and not being able himself, he set his boy to finish the 
tragedy upon Col. Jones." The night before he died he 
" told a friend he . had no other temptation but this, lest he 
should be too much transported, and carried out to neglect 
and slight his life, so greatly was he satisfied to die in that 
cause." 

*' The day he suffered, he grasped a friend in his arms, and said to 
him with some expressions of endearment, ' Farewell : I could wish 
thee in the same condition with myself, that thou mightes* share with 
me in my joys.'"! 

The famous Hugh Peters, the commonwealth preacher, 
whom Burnet speaks of as an " enthusiastical buffoon," and 
a very " vicious man," is thought by a greater loyalist 
(Burke) to have had " hard measures dealt him at the Restor- 
ation." He calls him a " poor good man." Peters was afraid 
at first he should not behave himself with the proper courage, 
but rallied his spirits afterwards, and, according to the 
account published by his friends (and all the accounts, it 
should be observed, emanate from that side), no man appears 
to have behaved better. Burnet says otherwise, and that 
he was observed all the while to be drinking cordials to 
keep him from fainting, and Burnet's testimony is not to be 
slighted, though he seems too readily to have taken upon trust 
some evil reports of Peters' life and manners, which the 
" poor man," expressly contradicted in prison. Be this as it 
may, " Being carried," says the account, " upon the sledge to 
execution, and made to sit thereon within the rails at 
Charing Cross to behold the execution of Mr. Cook, one 
comes to hirn and upbraided him with the death of the King, 

* State Trials, ut supra, vol. v., p. 1236. 
f Id. pp. 1284, 1286. 



BEN JONSON. — THE ADMIRALTY. 361 

bidding him (with opprobrious language) to repent ; he 
replied, 'Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying 
man ; you are greatly mistaken, I had nothing to do in the 
death of the King.' " 

" When Mr. Cook was cut down and brought to be quartered, one 
they called Colonel Turner called to the Sheriff 's men to bring Mr. 
Peters near that he might see him ; and by and by the hangman 
came to him all besmeared in blood, and rubbing his bloody hands 
together, he tauntingly asked, ' Come, how do you like this, how do 
you like this work ? ' To whom he replied, ' I am not, I thank God, 
terrified at it ; you may do your worst.' 

" When he was going to his execution, he looked about and espied 
a man, to whom he gave a piece of gold (having bowed it first), and 
desired him to go to the place where his daughter lodged, and to 
carry that to her as a token from him, and to let her know that his 
heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that before that piece 
should come into her hands he should be with God in glory. 

/' Being upon the ladder, he spake to the Sheriff, saying, ' Sir, you 
have here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and 
have made me to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me ; 
but God hath made it an ordinance to me for my strengthening and 
encouragement.' 

" When he was going to die, he said, ' What ! flesh, art thou un- 
willing to go to God through the fire and jaws of death ? Oh' (said 
he), ' this is a good day ; he is come that I have long looked for, and 
I shall be with him in glory ;' and so smiled when he went away. 

" What Mr. Peters said farther at his execution, either in his speech 
or prayer, it could not be taken, in regard his voice was low at that 
time, and the people uncivil." * 

Ben Jonson is supposed to have been born in Hartshorn 
Lane, Charing Cross, where he lived when a little child. 
" Though I cannot," says Fuller, " with all my industrious 
inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long 
coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, 
Charing Cross, when his mother married a bricklayer for her 
second husband. He was first bred in a private school in St. 
Martin's Court ; then in Westminster school." But we shall 
have other occasions of speaking of him. 

The famous reprobate Duke of Buckingham, Villiers, the 
second of that name, was born in Wallingford House, which 
stood on the site of the present Admiralty. " The Admiralty 
Office," says Pennant "stood originally in Duke Street, 
Westminster : but in the reign of King William was removed 
to the present spot, to the house then called Wallingford, I 
believe, from its having been inhabited by the Knollys, 
Yiscounts Wallingford. From the roof the pious Usher, 

f State Trials, vol, v., p. 1282. 



SC2 VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM; 

Archbishop of Armagh, then living here with the Countess of 
Peterborough, was prevailed on to take the last sight of his 
beloved master Charles I., when brought on the scaffold before 
Whitehall. He sank at the horror of the sight, and was 
carried in a swoon to his apartment." Wallingford House was 
often used by Cromwell and others in their consultations. 

" The present Admiralty Office," continues Pennant, " was 
rebuilt in the late reign, by Eipley ; it is a clumsy pile, but 
properly veiled from the street by Mr. Adam's handsome 
screen." Where the poor Archbishop sank in horror at the 
sight of the misguided Charles, telegraphs have since plied 
their dumb and far-seen discourses, like spirit in the guise of 
mechanism, telling news of the spread of Jiberty and know- 
ledge all over the world. Of the Villierses, Dukes of Buck- 
ingham, who have not heard ? The first one was a favourite 
not unworthy of his fortune, open, generous, and magnificent ; 
the second, perhaps because he lost his father so soon, a 
spoiled child from his cradle, wilful, debauched, unprincipled, 
but witty and entertaining. Here, and at York House in the 
Strand, he turned night into day, and pursued his intrigues, 
his concerts, his dabblings in chemistry and the philosopher's 
stone, and his designs on the Crown : for Charles's character, 
and the devices of Buckingham's fellow quacks and astro- 
logers, persuaded him that he had a chance of being king. 
When a youth, he compounded with Cromwell, and married 
Fairfax's daughter ; — he was afterwards all for the king, 
when he was not " all for rhyming" or ousting him; — when 
an old man, or near it (for these prodigious possessors of 
animal spirits have a trick of lasting a long while), he was 
still a youth in improvidence and dissipation, and his whole 
life was a dream of uneasy pleasure. He is now best known 
from Dryden's masterly portrait of him in the "Absalom and 
Achitophel." 

" A man so various, that he seemed to be, 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome ; 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
But in the course of one revolving moon, 
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
Blest madman ! who could every hour employ 
With something new to wish or to enjoy. 
Railing and praising were his usual themes ; 
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes j 



SIR WALTER SCOTT'S ACCOUNT OF HIM. 3G3 

So very violent, or over civil, 

That every man with him was God or devil. 

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 

Nothing went unrewarded "but desert. 

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, 

He had his jest, and they had his estate. 

He laugh'd himself from court ; then sought relief 

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief ; 

For spite of him, the weight of business fell 

On Absalom, or wise Achitophel ; 

Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 

He left not faction, but of that was left." 

" This inimitable description," observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note 
on the subject, "refers, as is well known, to the famous George 
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of the favourite of Charles I., 
who was murdered by Felton. The Restoration put into the hands 
of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who 
ever lived, an estate of 20,000/. a year, to be squandered in every wild 
scheme which the lust of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim, 
could dictate to an unrestrained imagination. Being refused the 
situation of President of the North, he was suspected of having 
favoured the disaffected in that part of England, and was disgraced 
accordingly. But in 1666 he regained the favour of the King, and 
became a member of the famous Administration called the Cabal, 
which first led Charles into unpopular and arbitrary measures, and 
laid the foundation for the troubles of his future reign. Buckingham 
changed sides about 1675, and becoming attached to the country 
party, made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation 
to the Popish plot ; intrigued deeply with Shaftesbury, and distin- 
guished himself as a promoter of the bill of exclusion. Hence, he 
stood an eminent mark for Dryden's satire ; which we may believe 
was not the less poignant, that the poet had sustained a personal 
affront, from being depicted by his grace under the character of Bayes 
in the " Rehearsal." As Dryden owed the Duke no favour, he has 
shown him none. Yet even here the ridiculous rather than the 
infamous part of his character is touched upon ; and the unprincipled 
libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous 
countess held his horse in the disguise of a page, and who boasted of 
caressing her before he changed the bloody clothes in which he had 
murdered her husband, is not exposed to hatred, whilst the spend- 
thrift and castle builder are held up to contempt. So just, however, 
is the picture drawn by Dryden, that it differs little from the follow- 
ing sober historical account. 

" ' The Duke of Buckingham was a man of great parts, and an 
infinite deal of wit and humour ; but wanted judgment, and had no 
virtue, or principle of any kind. These essential defects made his 
whole life one train of inconsistencies. He was ambitious beyond 
measure, and implacable in his resentments ; these qualities were the 
effects or different faces of his pride ; which, whenever he pleased to 
lay aside, no man living could be more entertaining in conversation. 
He had a wonderful talent in turning all things into ridicule ; but, by 
his own conduct, made a more ridiculous figure in the world than any 
which he could, with all his vivacity of wit and turn of imagination, 



364 DEATH OF VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 

draw of others. Frolic and pleasure took up the greatest part of his 
life: and in these he had neither any taste nor set himself any bounds: 
running into the wildest extravagances and pushing his debaucheries 
to a height, which even a libertine age could not help censuring as 
downright madness. He inherited the best estate which any subject 
had at that time in England ; yet his profuseness made him always 
necessitous, as that necessity made him grasp at every thing that 
would help to support his expenses. He was lavish without generosity, 
and proud without magnanimity ; and though he did not want some 
bright talents, yet no good one ever made part of his composition; 
for there was nothing so mean that he would not stoop to, nor any- 
thing so flagrantly impious but he was capable of undertaking.' " 

"Buckingham's death," concludes the commentator, "was as awful 
a beacon as his life. He had dissipated a princely fortune, and lost 
both the means of procuring and the power of enjoying the pleasures to 
which he was devoted. He had fallen from the highest pinnacle of 
ambition into the last degree of contempt and disregard." His dying 
scene, in a paltry inn, in Yorkshire, has been immortalized by Pope's 
beautiful lines: — 

" In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung ; 
The floors of plaister and the walls of dung ; 
On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw, 
With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, 
The George and Garter, dangling from that bed, 
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, 
Great Villiers lies ! Alas ! how changed from him ! 
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim ; 
Gallant and gay in Cliefden's proud alcove, 
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; 
Or just as gay at council, in a ring 
Of mimicked statesmen and a merry king; 
No wit to flatter left of all his store, 
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more ; 
There victor of his health, of fortune, friends, 
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends !"* 

" The worst inn's worst room," however, is a poetical 
fiction. Buckingham died at the house of one of his tenants 
at Kirby Mallory, where he was overtaken with illness. He 
had wasted his fortune to a comparitive nothing ; but was 
not reduced to such necessity as the poet would imply. f 

Andrew Marvel makes the statue of Charing Cross the 
speaker in one of his witty libels on Charles and his brother. 
There was an equestrian statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch, 
the horse of which is made to hold a dialogue with this other. 
The poet fancies that the riders, " weary of sitting all day," 

* Scott's Edition of " Dryden," vol. ix.. p. 270. 

f See the life of him by his retainer Fairfax, and the account of 
him on his deathbed in the "Collection of Letters of several Person^ 
of Quality and others." 



Marvel's satire oft tee Stuarts. 365 

Stole off one evening, and the two horses came together. 
The readers at Will's must have been a little astonished at 
the boldness of such passages as the following : — 

*' Quoth the marble horse, It would make a stone speak, 
To see a Lord Mayor and a Lombard Street beak, 
Thy founder and mine, to cheat one another, 
When both knaves agreed to be each other's brother. 
Here Charing broke forth, and thus he went on — 
My brass is provoked as much as thy stone 

To see church and state bow down to a 

And the King's chief ministers holding the door, 

The money of widows and orphans employed, 

And the bankers quite broke to maintain the 's pride. 

Woolchurch. To see Dei Gratia writ on the throne. 
And the King's wicked life says God there is none. 

Charing. That he should be styled Defender of the Faith, 
Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith. 

Woolchurch. That the Duke should turn Papist, and that church 
defy, 
For which his own father a Martyr did die. 

Charing. Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he 's so civil, 
Not to think his own father has gone to the Devil. 

***** 

Charing. Pause, brother, awhile, and calmly consider 
What thou hast to say against my royal rider. 

Woolchurch. Thy priest-ridden King turned desperate fighter 
For the surplice, lawn -sleeves, the cross, and the mitre; 
Till at last on the scaffold he was left in the lurch, 
By knaves, who cried themselves up for the church, 
Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons and deans. 

Charing. Thy King will ne'er fight unless for his Queens. 

Woolchurch. He that dys for ceremonys, dys like a fool. 

Charing. The King on thy back is a lamentable tool. 

Woolchurch. The goat and the lion I equally hate, 
And freemen alike value life and estate : 
Tho' the father and son be different rods, 
Between the two scourgers we find little odds; 
Both infamous stand in three kingdoms' votes, 
This for picking our pockets, that for cutting our throats. 
***** 

What is thy opinion of James Duke of York ? 

Charing. The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork. 
With the Turk in his head, and the Pope in his heart, 
Father Patrick's disciples will make England smart. 
If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom, 
We must all to a stake, or be converts to Rome. 
Ah! Tudor, ah! Tudor, of Stuarts enough ; 

None ever reigned like old Bess in the ruff. 

* * * * * 

Woolchurch. But canst thou devise when things will be mended? 
CharinGc When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended." 

And these very lampoons had a hand in ending them. 



366 locket's ordinary. 

In the days of Buckingham there was a famous house of 
entertainment' in Charing Cross, called Locket's Ordinary. 
"Where it exactly stood seems to be no longer known : we 
suspect by the great Northumberland Coffee-house. " It is 
often mentioned," says a manuscript in Birch's collection, 
"in the plays of Cibber, Vanbrugh, &c, where the scene 
sometimes is laid." It was much frequented by Sir George 
Etherege, as appears from the following anecdotes, picked up 
at the British Museum. Sir George Etherege and his com- 
pany, " provoked by something amiss in the entertainment or 
attendance, got into a violent passion and abused the waiters. 
This brought in Mrs. Locket : ' We are so provoked,' said Sir 
George, ' that even I could find in my heart to pull the nose- 
gay out of your bosom, and throw the flowers in your face.' 
This turned all their anger into jest." 

" Sir G. Etherege discontinued Locket's Ordinary, having run up a 
score which he could not conveniently discharge. Mrs. Locket sent 
one to dun him, and to threaten him with a prosecution. He bid the 
messenger tell her that he would kiss her if she stirred a step in it. 
When this answer was brought back, she called for her hood and 
scarf, and told her husband, who interposed, that ' she 'd see if there 
was any fellow alive who had the impudence.' ' Pr'ythee, my dear, 
don't be so rash,' said her husband, 'you don't know what a man may 
do in his passion.' "* 

The site of the tavern is now also unknown, where Prior 
was found, when a boy, reading Horace. It was called the 
Rummer. Mr. Nichols has found that, in the year 1685, it 
was kept by " Samuel Prior," and that the " annual feasts of 
the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin" 
were held there, October 14, in that year. " Prior," says 
Johnson, " is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, 
into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing Cross, 
who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster ; 
but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of 
the school, took him, when he was well educated in literature, 
to his own house, where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for 
patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, 
reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, 
that he undertook the care and cost of his academical ' edu- 
cation." f 

. * MSS. Birch, 4221, quoted in the Notes of the Tatler, ut supra, 
vol. i., p. 208. 

•j- Life of Prior in the " Lives of the Poets." 



367 

It is doubtful, however, from one of Prior's epistles to 
Fleetwood Shepherd, whether the poet was more indebted to 
the Lord Dorset or to that gentleman for his first advance- 
ment in life, though the Earl finally became his great patron. 
He says to Shepherd, — 

" Now, as you took me up when little 
Gave me my learning and my vittle, 
Asked for me, from my lord, things fitting 
Kind, as I 'ad been your own begetting, 
Confirm what formerly you 've given, 
Nor leave me now at six and seven, 
As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen." 

And again : — 

" My uncle, rest his soul! when living, 
Might have contrived me ways of thriving; 
Taught me with cider to replenish 
My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish ; 
So, when for hock I drew pricked white-wine, 
Swear 't had the flavour, and was right- wine ; 
Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni- 
VaPs Inn, to some good rogue attorney ; 
"Where now, by forging deeds and cheating, 
I 'ad found some handsome ways of getting. 
All this you made me quit to follow 
That sneaking, whey-fac'd god Apollo; 
Sent me among a fiddling crew 
Of folks, I 'ad never seen nor knew, 
Calliope, and God knows who. 
I add no more invectives to it, 
You spoiled the youth to make a poet." 

Johnson says " A survey of the life and writings of Prior 
may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless understood well 
when he read Horace at his uncle's ; ' the vessel long retains 
the scent which it first receives.' In his private relaxation he 
revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhi- 
bited the college. But on higher occasions and nobler sub- 
jects, when habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflec- 
tion, he wanted not wisdom as a statesman, or elegance as a 
poet." It is doubtful whether the general colour of every- 
body's life and character might not be found in that of his 
childhood ; but there is no more reason to think that Prior's 
tavern propensities were owing to early habit than those of 
his patrician companions. No man was fonder of his bottle 
than Lord Dorset, and of low company than many a lord has 
been. According to Burke, who was a king's man, kings are 
naturally fond of low company. Yet they are no nephews of 



368 THOMSON. — SPRING GARDENS. 

tavern-keepers. Nor does it appear that Prior did anything 
in his uncle's house but pass the time and read. 

Thomson wrote part of his " Seasons " in the room over the 
shop of Mr. Egerton, bookseller, where he resided when he 
first came to London. He was at that time a raw Scotchman, 
gaping about town, getting his pocket picked, and obliged to 
wait upon great men with his poem of " Winter." Luckily 
his admiration of freedom did not hinder him from acquiring 
the highest patronage. He obtained an easy place, which 
required no compromise with his principles, and passed the 
latter part of his life in a dwelling of his own at Richmond, 
writing in his garden, and listening to nightingales. He was 
of an indolent constitution, and has been seen in his garden 
eating peaches off the trees, with his hands in his waistcoat 
pockets. But his indolence did not hinder him from writing. 
He had the luck to have the occupation he was fond of ; and 
no man perhaps in his native country, with the exception 
of Shakspeare, has acquired a greater or more unenvied fame. 
His friends loved him, and his readers love his memory. 

In Spring Gardens, originally a place of public entertainment, 
died Mrs. Centlivre, the sprightly authoress of the " Wonder," 
the "Busy Body," and the " Bold Stroke for a Wife." She 
was buried at St. Martin's. She is said to have been a 
beauty, an accomplished linguist, and a good-natured friendly 
woman. Pope put her in his " Dunciad," for having written, 
it is said, a ballad against his " Homer " when she was a 
child ! But the probability is that she was too intimate with 
Steele and other friends of Addison while the irritable poet 
was at variance with them. It is not impossible, also, that 
some raillery of hers might have been applied to him, not 
very pleasant from a beautiful woman against a man of his 
personal infirmities, who was naturally jealous of not being 
well with the sex. Mrs. Centlivre is said to have been 
seduced when young by Anthony Hammond, father of the 
author of the "Love Elegies," who took her to Cambridge with 
him in boy's clothes. This did not hinder her from marry- 
ing a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who died a year there- 
after ; nor from having two husbands afterwards. Her 
second was an officer in the army, of the name of Carrol, 
who, to her great sorrow, was killed in a duel. Her third 
husband, Mr. Centlivre, who had the formidable title of Yeo- 
man of the Mouth, being principal cook to Queen Anne, fell 
in love with her when she was performing the part of 



MRS. CENTLIVRE. — HEDGE LANE. 369 

Alexander the Great, at "Windsor ; for she appears at one 
time to have been an actress, though she never performed in 
London. Mrs. Centlivre's dramas are not in the taste of Mrs. 
Hannah More's, but the public still have a regard for them. 
All the plays above-mentioned are stock pieces. The reason 
is, that, careless as they are in dialogue, and not very scrupu- 
lous in manners, they are full of action and good-humour. 

Hedge Lane retained its name till lately, when, ceasing 
to be a heap of squalidity, it was new christened and re- 
ceived the appellation of Dorset Place. Part of it is merged 
in Pall Mall East. It is now the handsomest end of the 
thoroughfare which runs up into Oxford Road, and takes the 
successive names of Whitcomb, Princes, and Wardour Streets. 
Not long ago the whole thoroughfare appears to have been 
called Hedge Lane. It is related of Steele, Budgel, and Philips, 
that, issuing from a tavern one day in Gerrard Street, they were 
about to turn into Hedge Lane, when they were told that some 
suspicious -looking persons were standing there as if in wait. 
"Thank ye," said the wits, and hurried three different ways. 

It is not pleasant to have old places altered which are 
connected with interesting recollections, even if the place or 
recollection be none of the pleasantest. When the houses 
in Suffolk Street were pulled down, we could not help 
regretting that the abode was among them in which 
poor Miss Vanhomrigh lived, who died for love of Swift. 
She resided there with her mother, the widow of a Dutch 
merchant, and had a small fortune. Swift while in England, 
upon the affairs of the Irish Church, was introduced to them, 
and became so intimate as to leave his best gown and cas- 
sock there for convenience. He found the coffee also very 
pleasant, and gradually became too much interested in the 
romantic spirit and flattering attentions of the young lady, 
whose studies he condescended to direct, and who, in short, fell 
in love with him at an age when he was old enough to be her 
father. Unluckily he was married ; and most unluckily he 
did not say a word about the matter. It is curious to observe 
in the letters which he sent over to Stella (his wife), with 
what an affected indifference he speaks of the Vanhomrighs 
and his visits to them, evidently thinking it necessary all the 
while to account for their frequency. When he left England, 
Miss Vanhomrigh, after the death of her mother, followed 
him, and proposed that he should either marry or refuse her. 
lie would do neither, 

B B 



370 SWIFT AND MISS VANHOMRlGH. 

At length botli the ladies, the married and unmarried, dis- 
covered their mutual secret : a discovery which is supposed 
ultimately to have hastened the death of both. Miss Van- 
homrigh's survival of it was short — not many weeks. For 
what may remain to be said on this painful subject the 
reader will allow us to quote a passage from one of the 
magazines. 

"There was a vanity, perhaps, on both sides, though it may be 
■wrong to attribute a passion wholly to that infirmity, where the 
object of it is not only a person celebrated, but one full of wit and 
entertainment. The vanity was certainly not the less on his side. 
Many conjectures have been made respecting the nature of this con- 
nection of Swift's, as well as another more mysterious. The whole 
truth, in the former instance, appears obvious enough. Swift, partly 
from vanity, and partly from a more excusable craving after some 
recreation of his natural melancholy, had suffered himself to take a 
pleasure, and exhibit an interest, in the conversation of an intelligent 
young woman, beyond what he ought to have done. An attachment 
on her part ensued, not greater, perhaps, than he contemplated with 
a culpable satisfaction as long as it threatened no very great disturb- 
ance of his peace, but which must have given him great remorse in 
after-times, when he reflected upon his encouragement of it. On the 
occasion of its disclosure his self-love inspired him with one of his 
most poetical fancies: — 

* Cadenus many things had writ ; 
Vanessa much esteemed his wit, 
And called for his poetic works : 
Meanwhile the boy in secret lurks, 
And while the book was in her hand 
The urchin from his private stand, 
Took aim, and shot with all his strength 
A dart of such prodigious length, 

It pierced the feeble volume through, 
And deep transfixed her bosom too. 
Some lines more moving than the rest, 
Stuck to the point that pierced her breast, 
And borne directly to the heart, 
"With pains unknown increased her smart. 
Vanessa, not in years a score, 
Dreams of a gown of forty-four, 
Imaginary charms can find 
In eyes with reading almost blind: 
Cadenus now no more appears 
Declined in health, advanced in years, 
She fancies music in his tongue, 
Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.* 
u A reflection ensues which it i6 a pity he had not made before: — 

* What mariner is not afraid 
To venture in a ship decayed ? 
What planter will attempt to yoke 
A sapling with a fallen oak ? 



calves' head club. 371 

As years increase she brighter shines, 

Cadenus with each day declines ; 

And he must fall a prey to time 

While she continues in her prime.' 
"If he had thought of this when he used to go to her mother's 
house in order to change his wig and gown and drink coffee, lie would 
have avoided those encouragements of Miss Vanhomrigh's sympathy 
and admiration, which must have given rise to very bitter reflections 
when she read such passages as the lines that follow : — 

* Cadenus, common forms apart, 

In every scene had kept his heart; 

Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ, 

For pastime, or to show his wit.' 
" It was sport to him, but death to her. His allegations of not 
being conscious of anything on her part, are not to be trusted. There 
are few men whose self-love is not very sharp-sighted on such occa- 
sions, — men of wit in particular ; nor was Swift, notwithstanding the 
superiority he assumed over fopperies of all sorts, and the great 
powers which gave a passport to the assumption, exempt, perhaps, 
from any species of vanity. The more airs he gives himself on that 
point, the less we are to believe him. He was fond of lor Is and great 
ladies, and levees, and canonicals, and of having the verger to walk 
before him. He saw very well, we may be assured, the impression 
which he made on the young lady ; but he hoped, as others have 
hoped, that it would accommodate itself to circumstances in cases of 
necessity; or he pretended to himself that he was too modest to be- 
lieve it a great one ; or sacrificing her ultimate good to her present 
pleasure and to his own, he put off the disagreeable day of alteration 
and self-denial till it was too late. There are many reasons why 
Swift should have acted otherwise, and why no man, at any time of 
life, should hazard the peace of another by involvements which he 
cannot handsomely follow up. If he does, he is bound to do what he 
can for it to the last."* 

The famous Calves' Head Club (in ridicule of the memory 
of Charles I.) was held at a tavern in Suffolk Street ; at least 
the assembly of it was held there which made so much noise 
in the last century, and produced a riot. At this meeting it 
was said that a bleeding calf's head had been thrown out 
of the window, wrapt up in a napkin, and that the members 
drank damnation to the race of the Stuarts. This was 
believed till the other day, and has often been lamented as a 
disgusting instance of party spirit. To say the truth, the 
very name of the club was disgusting, and a dishonour to the 
men who invented it. It was more befitting their own heads. 
But the particulars above mentioned are untrue. The letter 
has been set right by the publication of " Spence's Anecdotes," 
at the end of which are some letters to Mr. Spence, including 
pne from Lord Middlesex, giving the real account of the 

* New Monthly Magazine, vol. xvii., p. 140. 

B B 2 



6C2, CALVES HEAD CLUB. 

affair. By the style of the letter the reader may judge what 
sort of heads the members had, and what was reckoned the 
polite way of speaking to a waiter in those days : — 

Whitehall, Feb. y e 9th, 1735. 

"Dear Spanco, 

" I don't in the least doubt but long before this time the noise of the 
riot on the 30 of Jan. has reached you at Oxford, and though there 
has been as many lies and false reports raised upon the occasion in 
this good city as any reasonable man could expect, yet I fancy even 
those may be improved or increased before they come to you. Now, 
that you may be able to defend your friends (as I don't in the least 
doubt you have an inclination to do), I'll send you the matter of fact 
literally and truly as it happened, upon my honour. Eight of us 
happened to meet together the 30th of January, it might have been the 
10th of June, or any other day in the year, but the mixture of the 
company has convinced most reasonable people by this time that it 
was not a designed or premeditated affair. We met, then, as I told 
you before, by chance upon this day, and after dinner, having drunk 
very plentifully, especially some of the company, some of us going to 
the window unluckily saw a little nasty fire made by some boys in 
the street, of straw I think it was, and immediately cried out, ' Damn 
it, why should not we have a fire as well as anybody else?' Up 
comes the drawer, ' Damn you, you rascal, get us a bonfire.' Upon 
which the imprudent puppy runs down, and without making any 
difficulty (which he might have done by a thousand excuses, and 
which if he had, in all probability, some of us would have come more 
to our senses), sends for the faggots, and in an instant behold a large 
fire blazing before the door. Upon which some of us, wiser, or rather 
soberer, than the rest, bethinking themselves then, for the first time, 
what day it was, and fearing the consequences a bonfire on that day 
might have, proposed drinking loyal and popular healths to the mob 
(out of the window), which by this time was very great, in order to 
convince them we did not intend it as a ridicule upon that day. The 
healths that were drank out of the window were these, and these only: 
The King, Queen, and Royal Family, the Protestant Succession, 
Liberty and Property, the present Administration. Upon which the 
first stone was flung, and then began our siege: which, for the time 
it lasted, was at least as furious as that of Philipsbourgh ; it was 
more than an hour before we got any assistance; the more sober part 
of us, doing this, had a fine time of it, fighting to prevent fighting; in 
danger of being knocked on the head by the stones that came in at the 
windows; in danger of being run through by our mad friends, who, 
sword in hand, swore they would go out, though they first made their 
way through us. At length the justice, attended by a strong body 
of guards, came and dispersed the populace. The person who first 
stirred up the mob is known; he first gave them money, and then 
harangued them in a most violent manner; I don't know if he did not 
fling the first stone himself. He is an Irishman and a priest, and be- 
longing to Imberti, the Venetian Envoy. This is the whole story 
from which so many calves' heads, bloody napkins, and the Lord 
knows what has been made; it has been the talk of the town and the 
country, and small beer and bread and cheese to my friends the Gar? 



retters in Grub Street, for these few days past. I, as well as your 
friends, hope to see you soon in town. After so much prose, I can't 
help ending with a few verses: — 

O had I lived in merry Charles's days, 

When dull the wise were called, and wit had praise ; 

When deepest politics could never pass 

For aught, but surer tokens of an ass; 

When not the frolicks of one drunken night 

Could touch your honour, make your fame less bright, 

Tho' mob-form'd scandal rag'd, and Papal spight. 

" Middlesex." 

The author of a " Secret History of the Calves' Head Club, 
or the Republicans Unmasked " (supposed to be Ned Ward, of 
ale-house memory), attributes the origin to Milton and some 
other friends of the Commonwealth, in opposition to Bishop 
Juxon, Dr. Sanderson, and others, who met privately every 
30th of January, and had compiled a private form of service 
for the day, not very different from that now in use. 

" After the Restoration," says the writer, " the eyes of the Govern- 
ment being upon the whole party, they were obliged to meet with a 
great deal of precaution; but in the reign of King William they met 
almost in a public manner, apprehending no danger." The writer 
farther tells us, he was informed that it was kept in no fixed house, 
but that they moved as they thought convenient. The place where 
they met when his informant was with them was in a blind alley 
near Moorfields, where an axe hung up in the club-room, and was 
reverenced as a principal symbol in this diabolical sacrament. Their 
bill of fare was a large dish of calves' heads, dressed several ways, by 
which they represented the king and his friends who had suffered in his 
cause; a large pike, with a small one in his mouth, as an emblem of 
tyranny; a large cod's head by which they intended to represent the 
person of the king singly ; a boar's head with an apple in its mouth, 
to represent the king by this as bestial, as by their other hieroglyphics 
they had done foolish and tyrannical. After the repast was over, one 
of their elders presented an Icon Basilike, which was with great 
solemnity burnt upon the table, whilst the other anthems were sing- 
ing. After this, another produced Milton's Defensio Populi Anglicani, 
upon which all laid their hands, and made a protestation in form of 
an oath for ever to stand by and maintain the same. The company 
only consisted of Independents and Anabaptists ; and the famous 
Jeremy White, formerly chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, who no doubt 
came to sanctify with his pious exhortations the ribaldry of the day, 
said grace. After the table-cloth was removed, the anniversary 
anthem, as they impiously called it, was sung, and a calf's skull filled 
with wine, or other liquor; and then a brimmer went about to the 
pious memory of those worthy patriots who had killed the tyrant and 
relieved their country from his arbitrary sway: and, lastly, a collec- 
tion was made for the mercenary scribbler, to which every man con- 
tributed according to his zeal for the cause and ability of his purse.'* 

"■ Although no great reliance," says Mr. Wilson, from whose life 
of De Foe this passage is extracted, " is to be placed upon the faith» 



374 



SCOTLAND YARD. 



fulness of Ward's narrative, yet, in the frighted mind of a high-flying 
churchman, which was continually haunted by such scenes, the cari- 
cature would easily pass for a likeness." "It is probable," adds the 
honest biographer of De Toe, " that the persons thus collected together 
to commemorate the triumph of their principles, although in a manner 
dictated by bad taste, and outrageous to humanity, would have con- 
fined themselves to the ordinary methods of eating and drinking, if 
it had not been for the ridiculous farce so generally acted by the 
royalists upon the same day. The trash that issued from the pulpit 
in this reign, upon the 30th of January, was such as to excite the 
worst passions in the hearers. Nothing can exceed the grossness of 
language employed upon these occasions. Forgetful even of common 
decorum, the speakers ransacked the vocabulary of the vulgar for 
terms of vituperation, and hurled their anathemas with wrath and 
fury against the objects of their hatred. The terms rebel and fanatic 
were so often upon their lips, that they became the reproach of honest 
men, who preferred the scandal to the slavery they attempted to 
establish. Those who could profane the pulpit with so much rancour 
in the support of senseless theories, and deal it out to the people for 
religion, had little reason to complain of a few absurd men who mixed 
politics and calves' heads at a tavern; and still less, to brand a whole 
religious community with their actions."* 

Scotland Yard is so called from a palace built for the 
reception of the Kings of Scotland when they visited this 



[B m 


l=p^-"^ _ j== == " V^i^ "::. ■ 




£9fl IK 







SCOTLAND YARD IN 1750. 

country. Pennant tells us that it was originally given to 
King Edgar, by Kenneth, Prince of that country, for the 
purpose of his coming to pay him annual homage, as Lord 
Paramount of Scotland. Margaret, widow of James Y. and 
sister of Henry VIII., resided there a considerable time after 
the death of her husband, and was magnificently entertained 
* Memoirs of the Life and Writings of De Foe, 1829, vol. ii., p. 116. 



PLEASANT ADVERTISEMENT. 375 

by her brother on his becoming reconciled to her second 
marriage with the Earl of Angus.* When the Crowns 
became united, James I. of course waived his right of abode 
in the homage-paying house, which was finally deserted as a 
royal residence. We know not when it was demolished. 
Probably it was devoted for some time to Government offices. 
Scotland Yard was the place of one of Milton's abodes during 
the time he served the Government of Cromwell. He lost an 
infant son there. The eccentric Beau Fielding died in it at 
the beginning of the last century, and Vanbrugh a little after 
him. There was a coffee-house in the yard, which seems, by 
the following pleasant advertisement, to have been frequented 
by good company : — 

"Whereas six gentlemen (all of the same honourable profession), 
having been more than ordinarily put to it for a little pocket-money, 
did, on the 14th instant, in the evening, near Kentish Town, borrow 
of two persons (in a coach) a certain sum of money, without staying 
to give bond for the repayment : And whereas fancy was taken to the 
hat, peruke, cravat, sword, and cane, of one of the creditors, which 
were all lent as freely as the money: these are therefore to desire the 
said six worthies, how fond soever they may be of the other loans, to 
un-fancy the cane again and send it to Well's Coffee House in Scot- 
land Yard; it being too short for any such proper gentlemen as they 
are to walk with, and too small for any of their important uses ; and 
withal, only valuable as having been the gift of a friend." f 

Beau Fielding was thought worthy of record by Sir Richard 
Steele, as an extraordinary instance of the effects of personal 
vanity upon a man not without wit. He was of the noble 
family of Fielding, and was remarkable for the beauty of his 
person, which was a mixture of the Hercules and the Adonis. 
It is described as having been a real model of perfection. He 
married to his first wife the dowager Countess of Purbeck ; 
followed the fortunes of James II., who is supposed to have 
made him a major-general and perhaps a count; returned and 
married a woman of the name of Wadsworth, under the im- 
pression that she was a lady of fortune ; and, discovering his 
error, addressed or accepted the addresses of the notorious 
Duchess of Cleveland, and married her, who, on discovering 
her mistake in turn, indicted him for bigamy and obtained a 
divorce. Before he left England to follow James, " Handsome 
Fielding," as he was called, appears to have been insane witn 

* Pennant, p. 110. 

t Extracted from Salisbury's Flying Post, of October 27, 1696, in 
Malcolm's Manners and Customs of London to the year 1700, vol. i., 
p. 396. 



S76 BEAU FIELDING. 

vanity On his return, he had added, to the natural absurdities 
of that passion, the indecency of being old ; but this only 
rendered him the more perverse in his folly. He always 
appeared in an extraordinary dress : sometimes rode in an 
open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, the better to display 
the nobleness of his person ; and his footmen appeared in 
liveries of yellow, with black feathers in their hats, and black 
sashes. When people laughed at him, he refuted them, as 
Steele says, "by only moving." Sir Richard says he saw 
him one day stop and call the boys about him, to whom he 
spoke as follows : — 

" Good youths, — Go to school, and do not lose your time in 
following my wheels : I am loth to hurt you, because I know 
not but you are all my own offspring. Hark ye, you sirrah 
with the white hair, I am sure you are mine, there is half-a- 
crown for you. Tell your mother, this, with the other half- 
crown I gave her .... comes to five shillings. Thou 
hast cost me all that, and yet thou art good for nothing. 
"Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" 
" Never such a one as you, noble general," replied a truant 
from Westminster. " Sirrah, I believe thee : there is a crown 
for thee. Drive on, coachman." Swift puts him in his list of 
Mean Figures, as one who " at fifty years of age, when he was 
wounded in a quarrel upon the stage, opened his breast and 
showed the wound to the ladies, that he might move their love 
and pity ; but they all fell a laughing." His vanity, which 
does not appear to have been assisted by courage, sometimes 
got him into danger. He is said to have been caned and 
wounded by a Welsh gentleman, in the theatre in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields ; and pressing forward once at a benefit of Mrs. Old- 
field's, 'to show himself,' he trod on Mr. Fulwood, a barrister, 
who gave him a wound twelve inches deep. His fortune, 
which he ruined by early extravagance, he thought to have 
repaired by his marriage with Mrs. Wadsworth, and endea- 
voured to do so by gambling ; but succeeded in neither 
attempt, and after the short-lived splendour with the Duchess 
of Cleveland, returned to his real wife, whom he pardoned, 
and died under her care. During the height of his magni- 
ficence, he carried his madness so far, according to Steele, as 
to call for his tea by beat of drum ; his valet got ready to 
shave him by a trumpet to horse ; and water was brought for 
his teeth, when the sound was changed to boots and saddle." 
If this looks like a jest, there is no knowing how far vanity 



VANBRUGH. 377 

might be carried, especially when the patient may cloak it 
from himself under the guise of giving way to a humour.* 

Vanbrugh, comic poet, architect, and herald, was comp- 
troller of the royal works. His house in Whitehall, built 
by himself, was remarkable for its smallness. Swift com- 
pared it to a goose-pie. On the other hand, his Blenheim 
and public buildings are ridiculed for their ponderous huge- 
ness. The close of Dr. Evans's epitaph upon him is well 
known: — 

Lie heavy on him earth, for he 

Laid many a heavy load on thee. 

When he was made Clarencieux king-at-arms, Swift said 
he might now " build houses." The secret of this ridicule 
was, that Vanbrugh was a Whig. Sir Joshua Reynolds has 
left the following high encomium on his merits as an archi- 
tect. " In the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as 
well as an architect, there is a greater display of imagination 
than we shall find, perhaps, in any other ; and this is the 
ground of the effect we feel in many of his works, notwith- 
standing the faults with which many of them are charged. 
For this purpose, Vanbrugh appears to have had recourse to 
some principles of the Gothic architecture, which, though not 
so ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with 
which the artist is more concerned than with absolute truth." 
" To speak of Vanbrugh (adds Sir Joshua), in the language 
of a painter, he had originality of invention; he understood 
light and shadow, and had great skill in composition. To 
support his principal object, he produced his second and third 
groups or masses. He perfectly understood in his art, what 
is the most difficult in ours, the conduct of the back-ground, 
by which the design and invention are set off to the greatest 
advantage. What the back-ground is in painting, in archi- 
tecture is the real ground on which the building is erected ; 
and no architect took greater care that his work should not 
appear crude and hard ; that is, that it did not abruptly start 
out of the ground without expectation or preparation. This 
is a tribute which a painter owes to an architect who com- 

* See State Trials, ut supra, " Egerton's Memoirs of Mrs. Oldfield;' 
" Swift's Great and Mean Figures," vol. xvii., 1765 ; and the "History 
of Orlando the Fair, in the Tatler," as above, Nos. 50 and 51. " The 
author of Memoirs of Fielding in the Select Trials," says a note on 
the latter number, " admits, that for all the ludicrous air and 
pleasantry of this narration (Steele's), the truth of facts and character 
is in general fairly represented." 



378 LORD HERBERT AND 

posed like a painter, and was defrauded of the due reward of 
his merit by the wits of his time, who did not understand the 
principles of composition in poetry better than he, and who knew 
little or nothing of what he understood perfectly — the general 
ruling principles of architecture and painting. Vanbrugh's 
fate was that of the great Perrault. Both were the objects of 
the petulant sarcasms of factious men of letters, and both 
have left some of the fairest monuments which, to this day, 
decorate their several countries ; — the facade of the Louvre ; 
Blenheim, and Castle Howard."* Perrault, however, had a 
worse fate than Vanbrugh, for the Frenchman was ridiculed 
not only as an architect but as a man of letters, whereas our 
author's pretensions that way were acknowledged. 

In the front of Scotland Yard an extraordinary adventure 
befell Lord Herbert of Cherbury — {see Queen Street, Lin- 
coln's Inn Fields), who relates it in a strain of coxcombry 
(particularly about the ladies) which would have brought 
discredit upon such a story from any other pen. There is no 
doubt, however, that the story is true. 

" There was a lady," says his lordship, " wife to Sir John Ayres, 
knight, who finding some means to get a copy of my picture from 
Larkin, gave it to Mr. Isaac, the painter, in Blackfriars, and desired 
him to draw it in little, after his manner ; which being done, she 
caused it to he set in gold and enamelled, and so wore it about her 
neck so low that she hid it under her breasts, which I conceive, coming 
afterwards to the knowledge of Sir John Ayres, gave him more cause 
of jealousie than needed, had he known how innocent I was from 
pretending to anything that might wrong him or his lady, since I 
could not so much as imagine that either she had my picture, or that 
she bare more than ordinary affection to me. It is true, that as she 
had a place in court, and attended Queen Anne, and was beside of an 
excellent wit and discourse, she had made herself a considerable 
person. Howbeit, little more than a common civility ever passed 
betwixt us ; though I confess I think no man was welcomer to her 
when I came, for which I shall allege this passage : — 

" Coming one day into her chamber, I saw her through the curtains 
lying upon her bed Avith a wax candle in one hand, and the picture I 
formerly mentioned in the other. I coming thereupon somewhat 
boldly to her, she blew out the candle and hid the picture from me : 
myself thereupon being curious to know what that was she held in 
her hand, got the candle to be lighted again, by means whereof I 
found it was my picture she looked upon with more earnestness and 
passion than I could easily have believed, especially since myself was 
not engaged in any affection towards her. I could willingly have 
omitted this passage, but that it was the beginning of a bloody history 
which followed : howsoever, yet I must before the eternal God clear 

* Discourses delivered at the Royal Academy. Sharpe's Edition, 
vol. ii., pp. 113, 115. 



SIR JOHN AYRES. 379 

her honour. And now in court a great person sent for me divers 
times to attend her ; which summons, though I obeyed, yet God 
knows I declined coming to her as much as conveniently I could 
without incurring her displeasure ; and this I did, not only for very 
honest reasons, but, to speak ingenuously, because that affection 
passed between me and another lady (who I believe was the fairest 
of her time) as nothing could divert it. I had not been long in 
London, when a violent burning fever seized upon me, which brought 
me almost to my death, though at last I did by slow degrees recover 
my health. Being thus upon my amendment, the Lord Lisle, after- 
wards Earl of Leicester, sent me word, that Sir John Ayres intended 
to kill me in my bed; and wished me to keep guard upon my 
chamber and person. The same advertisement was confirmed by 
Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and the Lady Hobby, shortly after. 
Hereupon I thought fit to entreat Sir William Herbert, now Lord 
Powis, to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell him that I marvelled much 
at the information given me by these great persons, and that I could 
not imagine any sufficient ground hereof ; howbeit, if he had anything 
to say to me in a fair and noble way, I would give him the meeting 
as soon as I had got strength enough to stand on my legs. Sir 
William hereupon brought me so ambiguous and doubtful an answer 
from him, that, whatsoever he meant, he would not declare yet his 
intention, which was really, as I found afterwards, to kill me any way 
that he could." The reason, Lord Herbert tells us, was, that Sir 
John, though falsely, accused him of having seduced his wife. 
" Finding no means thus to surprise me," continues the noble lord, 
" he sent me a letter to this effect ; that he desired to meet me some- 
where, and that it might so fall out as I might return quietly again. 
To this I replied, that if he desired to fight with me on equal terms, I 
should, upon assurance of the field and fair play, give him meeting 
when he did any way specify the cause, and that I did not think fit 
to come to him upon any other terms, having been sufficiently in- 
formed of his plots to assassinate me. 

" After this, finding he could take no advantage against me, then 
in a treacherous way he resolved to assassinate me in this manner ; 
— hearing I was to come to Whitehall on horseback with two lacqueys 
only, he attended my coming back in a place called Scotland Yard, at 
the hither end of Whitehall, as you come to it from the Strand, hiding 
himself here with four men armed to kill me. I took horse at White- 
hall Gate, and, passing by that place, he being armed with a sword 
and dagger, without giving me so much as the least warning, ran at 
me furiously, but instead of me, wounded my horse in the brisket, as 
far as his sword could enter for the bone ; my horse hereupon starting 
aside, he ran him again in the shoulder, which, though it made the 
horse more timorous, yet gave me time to draw my sword : his men 
thereupon encompassed me, and wounded my horse in three places 
more ; this made my horse kick and fling in that manner, as his men 
durst not come near me, which advantage I took to strike at Sir John 
Ayres with all my force, but he warded the blow both with his sword 
and dagger ; instead of doing him harm, I broke my sword within a 
foot of the hilt ; hereupon, some passenger that knew, me, observing 
my horse wounded in so many places, and so many men assaulting 
ine, and my sword broken, cried to me several times, ' Ride away, 
ride away;' but I scorning a base flight upon what terms soever, 



380 LORD HERBERT AftD 

instead thereof alighted as well I could from my horse ; 1 had n<) 
sooner put one foot upon the ground than Sir John Ayres, pursuing 
me, made at my horse again, which the horse perceiving, pressed on 
me on the side I alighted, in that manner, that he threw me down, so 
that I remained flat upon the ground, only one foot hanging in the 
stirrup, with that piece of a sword in my right hand. Sir John Ayres 
hereupon ran about the horse, and was thrusting his sword into me, 
when I, finding myself in this danger, did with both my arms reach- 
ing at his legs pull them towards me, till he fell down backwards on 
his head ; one of my footmen hereupon, who was a little Shropshire 
boy, freed my foot out of the stirrup, the other, who was a great fellow, 
having run away as soon as he saw the first assault ; this gave me 
time to get upon my legs and to put myself in the best posture I 
could with that poor remnant of a weapon ; Sir John Ayres by this 
time likewise was got up, standing betwixt me and some part of 
Whitehall, with two men on each side of him, and his brother behind 
him, with at least twenty or thirty persons of his friends, or attendants 
on the Earl of Suffolk ; observing thus a body of men standing in oppo- 
sition against me, though to speak truly I saw no swords drawn but Sir 
John Ayres' and his men, I ran violently against Sir John Ayres, 
but he, knowing my sword had no point, held his sword and dagger 
over his head, as believing I could strike rather than thrust, which I 
no sooner perceived but I put a home thrust to the middle of his 
breast, that I threw him down with so much force, that his head fell 
first to the ground and his heels upwards ; his men hereupon assaulted 
me, when one Mr. Mansel, a Glamorganshire gentleman, finding so 
many set against me alone, closed with one of them ; a Scotch gentle- 
man also, closing with another, took him off also : all I could well do 
to those that remained was to ward their thrusts, which I did with 
that resolution that I got ground upon them. Sir John Ayres was 
now got up a third time, when I making towards him with intention 
to close thinking, that there was otherwise no safety for me, put by 
a thrust of his with my left hand, and so coming within him, received 
a stab with his dagger on my right side, which ran down my ribs as 
far as my hips, which I feeling, did with my right elbow force his 
hand, together with the hilt of the dagger, so near the upper part of 
my right side, that I made him leave hold. The dagger now sticking 
in me, Sir Henry Carey, afterwards Lord of Eaulkland, and Lord 
Deputy of Ireland, finding the dagger thus in my body, snatched it 
out ; this while I, being closed with Sir John Ayres, hurt him on the 
head and threw him down a third time, when kneeling on the ground 
and bestriding him, I struck at him as hard as I could with my piece 
of a sword, and wounded him in four several places, and did almost 
cut off his left hand; his two men this while struck at me, but it 
pleased God even miraculously to defend me, for when I lifted up my 
sword to strike at Sir John Ayres, I bore off their blows half a dozen 
times; his friends now finding him in this danger, took him by the 
head and shoulders and drew him from betwixt my legs, and carrying 
him along with them through Whitehall, at the stairs whereof he took 
boat, Sir Herbert Croft (as he told me afterwards) met him upon the 
water vomiting all the way, which I believe was caused by the 
violence of the first thrust I gave him ; his servants, brother, and 
friends, being now retired also, I remained master of the place and his 



SIR JOHN AYRES. - 381 

weapons, having first wrested his dagger from him, and afterwards 
struck his sword out of his hand. 

" This being done, I retired to a friend's house in the Strand, where 
I sent for a surgeon, who, searching my wound on the right side, and 
finding it not to be mortal, cured me in the space of some ten days, 
during which time I received many noble visits and messages from 
some of the best in the kingdom. Being now fully recovered of my 
hurts, I desired Sir Robert Harley to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell 
him, that though I thought he had not so much honour left in him, 
that I could be in any way ambitious to get it, yet that I desired to 
see him in the field with his sword in his hand ; the answer that he 
sent me was (repeating the charge above mentioned) ' that he would 
kill me with a musket out of a window.' 

" The Lords of the Privy Council, who had at first sent for my 
sword, that they might see the little fragment of a weapon with which 
I had so behaved myself, as perchance the like had not been heard in 
any credible way, did afterwards command both him and me to 
appear before them ; but I, absenting myself on purpose, sent one 
Humphrey Hill with a challenge to him in an ordinary, which he 
refusing to receive, Humphrey Hill put it upon the point of his sword, 
and so let it fall before him and the company then present. 

" The Lords of the Privy Council had now taken order to appre- 
hend Sir John Ayres, when I, finding nothing else to be done, sub- 
mitted myself likewise to them. Sir John Ayres had now published 
everywhere that the ground of his jealousie, and consequently of his 
assaulting me, was drawn from the confession of his wife, the Lady 
Ayres. She, to vindicate her honour, as well as free me from this 
accusation, sent a letter to her aunt, the Lady Crook, to this purpose: 

that her husband, Sir John Ayres, did lie falsely but 

most falsely of all did lie when he said he had it from her confession, 
for she had never said any such thing. 

" This letter the Lady Crook presented to me most opportunely, as 
I was going to the Counsell table before the Lords, who, having 
examined Sir John Ayres concerning the cause of his quarrel with 
me, found him still to persist on his wife's confession of the fact; and 
now, he being withdrawn, I was sent for, when the Duke of Lennox, 
afterwards of Richmond, telling me that was the ground of his quarrel, 
and the only excuse he had for assaulting me in that manner, I desired 
his lordship to peruse the letter, which I told him was given me as I 
came into the room ; this letter being publicly read by a clerk of the 
Counsell, the Duke of Lennox then said, that he thought Sir John 
Ayres the most miserable man living, for his wife had not only given 
him the lie, as he found by the letter, but his father had disinherited 
him for attempting to kill me in that barbarous fashion, which was most 
true, as I found afterwards ; — for the rest, that I might content myself 
with what I had done, it being more almost than could be believed, 
but that I had so many witnesses thereof; for all which reasons, he 
commanded me in the name of his Majesty, and all their lordships, 
not to send any more to Sir John Ayres, nor to receive any message 
from him, in the way of fighting, which commandment I observed: 
howbeit, I must not omit to tell, that some years afterwards Sir John 
Ayres, returning from Ireland by Beaumaris, where I then was, some 
of my servants and followers broke open the doors of the house where 
he was, and would, I believe, have cut him into pieces, but that L, 



382 



WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 



hearing thereof, came suddenly to the house and recalled them, sending 
him word also that I scorned to give him the usage he gave me, and 
that I would set him free of the town, which courtesie of mine (as I 
was told afterwards) he did thankfully acknowledge."* 




CHAPTER X. 



WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 

Eegal Character of Whitehall — York Place — Personal and Moral 
Character of Wolsey — Comparison of him with his Master, Henry 
— His Pomp and Popularity — Humorous Account of his Flatterers 
by Sir Thomas More — Importance of his Hat — Cavendish's Account 
of his household State, his goings forth in Public, and his entertain- 
ments of the King. 

HE whole district containing all that col- 
lection of streets and houses, which ex- 
tends from Scotland Yard to Parliament 
Street, and from the river side, with its 
wharfs, to St. James's Park, and which 
is still known by the general appellation 
of Whitehall, was formerly occupied by a 
sumptuous palace and its appurtenances, 
the only relics of which, perhaps the noblest specimen, is the 
beautiful edifice built by Inigo Jones, and retaining its old 
name of the Banqueting House. 
* Life of Lord Herbert ot Cherbury, in the "Autobiography," p. 79, 




WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 3S3 

As this palace was the abode of a series of English sove- 
reigns, beginning with Henry the Eighth, who took it from 
Wolsey, and terminating with James the Second, on whose 
downfall it was destroyed by fire, we are now in the very 
thick of the air of royalty ; and so being, we mean to lead 
a princely life with the reader for a couple of chapters,— 
whether he take the word " princely" in a good or ill sense, 
as first in magnificence and authority, or in wilfulness and 
profusion. Cavendish, Holinshed, and the poets, will enable 
us to live with Wolsey, with Henry, and with Elizabeth ; 
Wilson and the poets, with James the First ; Clarendon, Pepys, 
and others with Charles the First, Cromwell, Charles the 
Second, and his brother. We shall eat and drink, and swell 
into most unapostolical pomp, with the great Cardinal ; shall 
huff and fume with Henry, and marry pretty Anne Bullen in 
a closet (Lingard says in a " garret") ; send her to have her 
head cut off as if nothing had happened ; be an everlasting 
young old gentlewoman with Queen Elizabeth, enamouring 
people's eyes at seventy ; drink and splutter, and be a great 
baby, with King James ; have a taste, and be henpecked, and 
not very sincere, yet melancholy and much to be pitied, with 
poor Charles the First; be uneasy, secret, and energetic, and 
like a crowned Methodist preacher, or an old dreary piece of 
English oak (choose which you will) with Oliver Cromwell ; 
saunter, squander, and be gay, and periwigged, and laughing, 
and ungrateful, and liked, and despised, and have twenty mis- 
tresses, and look as grim and swarthy, and with a face as fall 
of lines, as if Ave were full of melancholy and black bile, 
with Charles the Second ; and, finally, have all his melancholy, 
and none of his wit and mirth, with his poor, dreary, bigoted 
brother James. 

"Now, this is worshipful society." 
Whether it be happy or not, or enviable by the least peasant 
who can pay his way and sleep heartily, will be left to the 
judgment of the reader. 

The site of Whitehall was originally occupied by a mansion 
built by Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, and Chief Justice of 
England in the reign of Henry the Third, one of the ancestors 
of the present Marquess of Clanricarde. De Burgh bequeathed 
it to the Brotherhood of the Black Friars, near " Oldborne," in 
whose church he was buried ; the Brotherhood sold it to 
Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, who left it to his succes- 
sors in that see as the archiepiscopal residence, which pro- 



384 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 

cured it the name of York Place; and under that name, two 
centuries and a half afterwards, it became celebrated for the 
pomp and festal splendour of the " full-blown" priest, Wolsey, 
the magnificent butcher's son. Wolsey, on highly probable 
evidence, is thought to have so improved and enlarged the 
mansion of his predecessors, as to have in a manner rebuilt 
it, and given it its first royalty of aspect : but, as we shall see 
by and by, it was not called Whitehall, nor occupied anything 
like the space it did afterwards, till its seizure by the Car- 
dinal's master. 

We have always thought the epithet of " full-blown," as 
applied to Wolsey, the happiest poetical hit ever made by 
Dr. Johnson : 

" In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand, 
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand." 

His ostentation, his clerical robes, his very corpulence, and 
his subsequent fading, all conspire to render the image feli- 
citous. Wolsey is the very flower of priestly prosperity — fat, 
full-blown, gorgeous, called into life by sunshine ; the very 
odours he was fond of carrying in his hand, become a part of 
his efflorescence ; one imagines his cheek florid, and his huge, 
silken vestments expanding about him, like bloated petals. 
Anon, the blast blows from the horrid royal mouth : the 
round flower hangs its head ; it lays its dead neck on the 
earth ; and in its room, is a loathed weed. 

Wolsey, however, did not grow to be what he was with the 
indolence of a flower. He began his career with as much 
personal as mental activity, rendered himself necessary to the 
indolence of a young and luxurious Sovereign, — in fact, 
became his Sovereign's will in another shape, relieving the 
royal person of all trouble, and at the same time securing all 
his wishes, from a treaty down to a mistress; and hence, as 
he himself intimated, the whole secret of his prosperity. He 
had industry, address, eloquence, the power of pleasing, the 
art (till success spoilt him) of avoiding whatever was unplea- 
sant. He could set his master at ease with himself, in the 
smallest points of discourse, as well as on greater occasions. 
Henry felt no misgiving in his presence. He beheld in his 
lordly and luxurious agent a second self, with a superior 
intellect, artfully subjected to his own, so as to imply intel- 
lectual as well as royal superiority ; and he loved the priestly 
splendour of Wolsey, because, in setting the church so high, 
and at the same time carrying himself so loyally, the church* 



WOLSEt AND WHITEHALL. 885 

man only the more elevated the Prince. The moment the 
great servant appeared as if he could do without the greater 
master, by a fortune superior to failure in his projects, 
Henry's favour began to give way ; and when the princely 
churchman, partly in the heedlessness arising from long 
habits of security, and partly in the natural resentment of a 
superior mind, expressed a doubt whether his Sovereign was 
acting with perfect justice towards him, his doom was sealed. 
Kings never forgive a wound to their self-love. They have 
been set so high above fellowship by their fellow-creatures, 
that they feel, and in some measure they have a right to feel, 
the least intimation of equality, much more of superiority, as 
an offence, especially when it is aggravated by a secret sense 
of the justice of the pretension ; and all Wolsey's subsequent 
self-abasements could not do away with that stinging recol- 
lection, pleased as Henry was to widen the distance between 
them, and recover his own attitude of self-possession by airs 
of princely pity. Wolsey was a sort of Henry, himself — 
wilful, worldly, and fat, but with more talents and good- 
nature ; for he appears to have been a man of rare colloquial 
abilities, and, where he was not opposed in large matters, of 
a considerate kindliness. He was an attached as well as 
affable master ; and his consciousness of greater merit in 
himself would never have suffered him to send a couple of 
poor light-hearted girls to the scaffold, for bringing the royal 
marriage-bed into some shadow of a doubt of its s^redness. 
He would have sent them to a nunnery, and had a new 
marriage, without a tragedy in it, like a proper Christian 
Sultan ! Had Henry been in Wolsey's place, he would have 
proposed to set up the Inquisition ; and King Thomas would 
have reproved him, and told him that such severities did not 
become two such fat and jolly believers as they. 

The people appear to have liked Wolsey much. They 
enjoyed his pomp as a spectacle, and pitied his fall. They 
did not grudge his pomp to one who was so generous. 
Besides, they had a secret complacency in the humbleness of 
his origin, seeing that he rose from it by real merit. Those 
that quarrelled with him for his pride, were proud nobles and 
grudging fellow-divines. It is pretty clear that Shakspeare, 
who was such a " good fellow " himself, had a regard for 
Wolsey as another. He takes opportunities of echoing his 
praises, and dresses his fall in robes of pathos and eloquence. 
As to a true feeling of religion, it is out of the question in 

c c 



386 WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL. 

considering Wolsey 's history and times. It was not expected 
of him. It was not the fashion or the morality of the day. 
It was sufficient that the Church made its way in the world, 
and secretly elevated the interests of literature and scholar- 
ship along with it. A king in those times was regarded as a 
visible God upon earth, not thoroughly well behaved, but 
much to be believed in ; and if the Church could compete 
with the State, it was hoped that more perfect times would 
somehow or other ensue. A good deal of license was allowed 
it on behalf of the interests of better things — a singular 
arrangement, and, as the event turned out, not likely to better 
itself quite so peaceably as was hoped for ; but it was making 
the best, under the circumstances, of the old perplexity 
between " the shows of things, and the desires of the mind." 
Wolsey (as the prosperous and the upper classes are apt to 
do in all ages) probably worshipped success itself as the final 
proof of all which the divine Governor of the world intended, 
in his dealings with individuals or society. Hence his proud 
swelling while possessed of it, and his undisguised tears and 
lamentations during his decline. He talks with his confidants 
about the King and good fortune, like a boy crying for a cake, 
and they respectfully echo his groans, and evidently think 
them not at all inconsistent, either with manliness or wisdom. 
There was a breadth of character in all that Wolsey thought, 
did, and suffered — in his strength and in his weakness. In 
his prosperity he set no bounds to his pomp ; in adversity he 
cries out and calls upon the gods, not affecting to be a 
philosopher. When he was angry he huffed and used big 
words, like his master ; when in good humour, he loaded 
people with praise ; and he loved a large measure of it himself. 
He issued forth, with his goodly bulk and huge garments, 
and expected a worship analogous to his amplitudes. There 
is a passage written with great humour by Sir Thomas More, 
which, according to Dr. Wordsworth (the poet's brother), is 
intended, " no doubt, to represent the Cardinal at the head of 
his table." What reasons the doctor has for not doubting the 
application, we cannot say, and therefore do not think our- 
selves any more justified than inclined to dispute them. The 
supposition is hghly probable. Wolsey must have offered a 
fine dramatic spectacle to the eyes of a genius like More. We 
shall therefore copy the passage for the reader's entertainment, 
from a note in Mr. Singer's excellent edition of the Cardinal's 
Life by Cavendish : — . 



B87 

° Anthony. I praye you, Cosyn, tell on. Vincent. Whan I was 
fyrste in Almaine, Uncle, it happed me to be somewhat favoured with 
a great manne of the churche, and a great state, one of the greatest in all 
that country there. And in dede whosoever might spende as muche 
as hee mighte in one thinge and other, were a ryght great estate in 
anye countrey of Christendom. But glorious was hee verye farre above 
all measure, and that was great pitie, for it dyd harme, and made him 
abuse many great gyftes that God hadde given him. Never was he 
saciate of hearinge his owne prayse. 

" So happed it one daye, that he had in a great audience made an 
oracion in a certayne matter, wherein he liked himselfe so well, that 
at his dinner he sat, him thought, on thornes, tyll he might here how 
they that sat with hym at his borde, woulde commende it. And 
whan hee had sitte musing a while, devysing, as I thought after, 
iippon some pretty proper waye to bring it in withal, at the laste for 
lacke of a better, lest he should have letted the matter too long, he 
brought it even blontly forth, and asked us al that satte at his bordes 
end (for at his owne messe in the middes there sat but himself alone) 
how well we lyked his oracion that he hadde made that daye. But in 
fayth, Uncle, whan that probleme was once proponed, till it was full 
answered, no manne {I wene) eate one morsell of meate more. Every 
manne was fallen in so depe a studye, for the fyndynge of some exqui- 
site prayse. For he that shoulde have broughte out but a vulgare and 
a common commendacion, woulde have thoughte himself shamed for 
ever. Then sayde we our sentences by rowe as wee sat, from the 
lowest unto the hyghest in good order, as it had bene a great matter of 
the common weale, in a right solemne counsayle. Whan it came to my 
parte, I wyll not say it, Uncle, for no boaste, mee thoughte, by oure 
Ladye, for my parte, I quytte my selfe metelye wel. And I lyked 
my selfe the better because mee thoughte my words beeinge but a 
straungyer, wente yet with some grace in the Almain tong ; wherein 
lettyng my latin alone me listed to shewe my cunnyng, and I hoped 
to be lyked the better, because I sawe that he that sate next mee, and 
should saie his sentence after mee, was an unlearned Prieste, for he 
could speake no latin at all. But whan he came furth for hys part 
with my Lordes commendation, the wyly fox hadde be so well accus- 
tomed in courte with the crafte of flattry, that he wente beyonde me 
to farre. 

"And then might I see by hym, what excellence a right meane 
witte may come to in one crafte, that in al his whole life study eth and 
busyeth his witte about no mo but that one. But I made after a 
Bolempne vowe unto my selfe, that if ever he and I were matched 
together at that boarde agayne, whan we should fall to our fiattrye, I 
would flatter in latin, that he should not contende with me no more. 
For though I could be contente to be out runne by an horse, yet would 
I no more abyde it to be out runne of an asse. But, Uncle, here 
beganne no we the game; he that sate hyghest, and was to speake, 
was a great beneficed man, and not a Doctour only, but also some- 
what learned in dede in the lawes of the Churche. A worlde it was 
to see howe he marked every mannes worde that spake before him. 
And it seemed that every worde the more proper it was, the worse he 
liked it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better to passe it. 
manne even swette with the laboure, so that he was faine in the while 
now and than to wipe his face. Howbeit in conclusion whan it <&me 

CC2 



38& ms cardinal's fiAf* 

to his course, we that had spoken before him, hadde so taken up al 
among us before, that we hadde not lefte him one wye worde to speake 
after. 

"Anthony. Alas good manne ! amonge so manye of you, some good 
felow shold have lente hym one. Vincent. It needed not, as happe 
was, Uncle. For he found out such a shift, that in hys flatterying he 
passed us all the many. Anthony. Why, what sayde he, Cosyn ? 
Vincent. By our Ladye, Uncle, not one worde. But lyke as I trow 
Plinius telleth, that when Appelles the Paynter in the table that he 
paynted of the sacryfyce and the death of Iphigenia, hadde in the 
makynge of the sorrowefull countenances of the other noble menne of 
Greece that beehelde it, spente out so much of his craft and hys 
cunnynge, that whan he came to make the countenance of King 

Agamemnon her father, which hee reserved for the laste 

he could devise no maner of newe heavy chere and countenance — but 
to the intent that no man should see what maner countenance it was, 
that her father hadde, the paynter was fayne to paynte him, holdyng 
his face in his handkercher — the like pageant in a maner plaide us 
there this good aunciente honourable flatterer. For whan he sawe that 
he coulde fynde no woordes of prayse, that woulde passe al that hadde 
bene spoken before all readye, the wyly Fox woulde speake never a 
worde, but as he that were ravished unto heavenwarde with the wonder of 
the wisdom and eloquence that my Lordes Grace had uttered in that 
oracyon. hefette a long syghe with an Oh ! from the bottome of his breste, 
and helde uppe bothe hys handes, and lyfte uppe both his handes, and lyfte 
uppe his head, and caste up his eyen into the welkin and wept." 

But if Wolsey set store by his fine speaking, he knew also 
what belonged to his hat ; he was quite alive to the effect 
produced by his office, and knew how to get up and pamper a 
ceremony — to cook up a raw material of dignity for the 
public relish. It should be no fault of his, that any toy of 
his rank should not be looked up to with awe. Accordingly, 
a most curious story is told of the way in which he contrived 
that the Cardinal's hat, which was sent him during his resi- 
dence in York Place, should make its first appearance in 
public. Cavendish says, that the hat having been sent by 
the Pope through the hands of an ordinary messenger, with- 
out any state, Wolsey caused him to be " stayed by the way," 
newly dressed in rich apparel, and met by a gorgeous caval- 
cade of prelates and gentry. But a note in Mr. Singer's 
edition, referring to Tindal and Fox, tells us that the messenger 
actually reached him in York Place, was clothed by him as 
aforesaid, and sent back with the hat to Dover, from whence 
the cavalcade went and fetched him. The hat was then set 
on a sideboard full of plate, with tapers round about it, " and 
the greatest Duke in the lande must make curtesie thereto." 

Cavendish has given a minute account of the household at 
York Place, from which the following are extracts. CompajQ 



WOLSEY'S HOUSEHOLD AT YORK PLACE. 389 

them with the recollection of " the disciples plucking ears of 
corn :" — 

" He had in his hall, daily, three especial tattles furnished with three 
principal officers ; that is to say, a Steward, which was always a dean 
or a priest; a Treasurer, a knight; and a Comptroller, an esquire; 
which bore always within his house their white staves. Then had he 
a cofferer, three marshals, two yeoman ushers, two grooms, and an 

almoner," &c, &c, &c "In his privy kitchen, he had a 

master-cook, who went daily in damask, satin, or velvet, with a chain 
of gold about his neck." .... In his chapel, he had " a Dean, 
who was always a great clerk and a divine ; a Sub-dean ; a Repeater 
of the quire ; a Gospeller, a Pisteller (separate men to read the 
Gospels and the Epistles), and twelve singing Priests ; of Scholars, 
he had first, a Master of the children ; twelve singing children ; six- 
teen singing men ; with a servant to attend upon the said children. 
In the Revestry, a yeoman and two grooms : then were there divers 
retainers of cunning singing men, that came thither at divers sundry 
principal feasts. But to speak of the furniture of this chapel passeth 
my capacity to declare the number of the costly ornaments and rich 
jewels, that were occupied in the same continually. For I have seen 
there, in a procession, worn forty-four copes of one suit, very rich, 
besides the sumptuous crosses, candlesticks, and other necessary orna- 
ments to the comely furniture of the same. Now shall ye understand 
that he had two cross-bearers, and two pillar-bearers ; and in his 
chamber, all these persons ; that is to say: his High Chamberlain; 
his Vice - Chamberlain ; twelve Gentlemen Ushers, daily waiters; 
besides two in his Privy Chamber ; and of Gentlemen waiters in his 
Privy Chamber he had six; and also he had of Lords nine or ten, who 
had each of them allowed two servants ; and the Earl of Derby had 
allowed five men. Then had he of Gentlemen, as cup-bearers, carvers, 
sewers, and Gentlemen daily waiters, forty persons; of yeomen ushers 
he had six; of grooms in his chamber he had eight; of yeomen of his 
chamber he had forty-six daily to attend upon his person ; he had 
also a priest there which was his Almoner, to attend upon his table at 
dinner. Of doctors and chaplains attending in his closet to say daily 
mass before him, he had sixteen persons: and a clerk of his closet. Also 
he had two secretaries, and two clerks of his signet : and four coun- 
sellors learned in the laws of the realm. 

" And, for as much as he was Chancellor of England, it was neces- 
sary for him to have divers officers of the Chancery, to attend daily 
upon him, for the better furniture of the same. That is to say, first, 
he had the Clerk of the Crown, a Riding Clerk, a Clerk of the 
Hanaper, a Chafer of Wax. Then had he a Clerk of the Check, as 
well to check his chaplains, as his yeomen of the chamber; he had 
also four Footmen, which were apparelled in rich running coats, 
whensoever he rode any journey. Then had he an Herald at Arms, 
and a Serjeant at Arms; a Physician; an Apothecary; four Minstrels ; 
A Keeper of his Tents ; an Armourer ; an Instructor of his Wards ; 
two Yeomen in his Wardrobe ; and a Keeper of his chamber in the 
court. He had also daily in his house the Surveyor of York, a Clerk 
of the Green Cloth; and an auditor. All this number of persons were 
daily attendant upon him in his house, down-lying and up-rising, 



390 wolsey's love of state. 

And at meals, there was continually in his chamber a hoard kept for 
his Chamberlains, and Gentlemen Ushers, having with them a mes? 
of the young Lords, and another for gentlemen. Besides all thes^ 
there was never an officer and gentleman, or any other worthy per- 
son in his house, but he was allowed some three, some two servants; 
and all other one at the least; which amounted to a great number 
of persons." 

Such was the style in which Wolsey grew fat, in-doors* 
When he went out of doors, to Westminster Hall for instance) 
as Chancellor, or merely came into an anteroom, to speak 
with his suitors, the following was the state which he always 
kept up. Think of Lord Brougham or Lord Lyndhurst in 
our own times, modestly eschewing notice, and going down to 
the House in a plain hat and trowsers, and then look on the 
following picture : — 

"Now will I declare unto you," says the worthy Cavendish, strik- 
ing up a right gentleman-usher note (and out of this very gentleman- 
usher's family came the princely house of Devonshire, which has 
lasted with so much height and refinement ever since,) — "Now will 
I declare unto you his order in going to Westminster Hall, daily in 
the term season. First, before his coming out of his privy chamber, 
he heard most commonly every day two masses in his private closet ; 
and there then said his daily service with his chaplain ; and, as I 
heard his chaplain say, being a man of credence and of excellent 
learning, that the Cardinal, what business or weighty matters soever 
he had in the day, he never went to his bed with any part of his 
divine service unsaid, yea, not so much as one collect; wherein I 
doubt not but he deceived the opinion of divers persons. And after 
mass he would return in his privy chamber again, and being adver- 
tised of the furniture of his chambers without, with noblemen, 
gentlemen, and other persons, would issue out into them, apparelled 
all in red, in the habit of a cardinal ; which was either of fine scarlet, 
or else of crimson satin, taffety, damask, or caffa, the best that he 
could get for money; and upon his head a round pillion, with a noble 
of black velvet set to the same in the inner side; he had also a tippet 
of fine sables about his neck; holding in his hand a very fair orange, 
whereof the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up 
again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar, and other con- 
fections against the pestilent airs ; the which he most commonly 
smelt unto, passing among the press, or else when he was pestered, 
with many suitors. There was also borne before him, first, the great 
seal of England, and then his cardinal's hat, by a nobleman or some 
worthy gentleman, right solemnly, bareheaded. And as soon as he was 
entered into his chamber of presence, where there was attending his 
coming to await upon him to Westminster Hall, as well noblemen 
and other worthy gentlemen, as noblemen and gentlemen of his own 
family ; thus passing forth with two great crosses of silver borne 
before him ; with also two great pillars of silver, and his pursuivant 
at arms with a great mace of silver gilt. Then his gentlemen ushers 
cried, and said : ' On, my lords and masters, on before; make way for 
my Lord's Grace J ' Thus passed he down from his chamber through 



wolsey's love of state. 391 

the hall; and when he came to the hall door, there was attendant for 
him his mule, trapped altogether in crimson velvet, and gilt stirrups. 
"When he was mounted, with his cross bearers, and pillow bearers, 
also upon great horses trapped with [fine] scarlet, then marched he 
forward, with his train and furniture in manner as I have declared, 
having about him four footmen, with gilt poll-axes in their hands ; 
and thus he went until he came to Westminster Hall door. And 
there alighted and went after this manner, up through the hall into 
the chancery; howbeit he would most commonly stay awhile at a bar, 
made for him, a little beneath the chancery [on the right hand], and 
there commune some time with the judges, and some time with other 
persons. And that done he would repair into the chancery, sitting 
there till eleven of the clock, hearing suitors, and determining on 
divers matters. And from thence, he would divers times go into the 
star chamber, as occasion did serve ; where he spared neither high 
nor low, but judged every estate according to their merits and de- 
merits.'* 

But this style of riding abroad was not merely for official 
occasions. He went through Thames Street every Sunday, 
in his way to the court at Greenwich, with his crosses, his 
pillars, his hat, and his great seal. He was as fond of his 
pomp out of doors, as a child is of its new clothes. 

The description of the way in which he used to receive the 
visits of the King at York Place, has acquired a double 
interest from the use made of it by Shakspeare, by whom it 
has been, in a manner, copied, in his play of " Henry the 
Eighth:" 

" Thus in great honour, triumph, and glory," says Cavendish, " he 
reigned a long season, ruling all things within this realm, appertain- 
ing unto the King, by his wisdom, and also all other weighty matters 
of foreign regions with which the King of this realm had any occa- 
sion to intermeddle. All Ambassadors of foreign potentates were 
always dispatched by his discretion, to whom they had always access 
for their dispatch. His house was also always resorted and furnished 
with noblemen, gentlemen, and other persons, with going and coming 
in and out, feasting and banqueting all Ambassadors divers times, 
and other strangers right nobly. 

" And when it pleased the King's Majesty, for his recreation, to 
repair unto the Cardinal's house, as he did divers times in the year, 
at which time there wanted no preparations, or goodly furniture, with 
viands of the finest sort that might be provided for money or friend- 
ship, such pleasures were then devised for the King's comfort and 
consolation, as might be invented, or by man's wit imagined. The 
banquets were set forth, with masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous 
a sort, and costly a manner, that it was a heaven to behold. There 
wanted no dames, or damsels, meet or apt to dance with the maskers, or to 
garnish the place for the time, with other goodly disports. Then was 
there all kind of music and harmony set forth, with excellent voices 
both of men and children. I have seen the King suddenly come in 
thither in a mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments like 



392 THE KING AND THE GARDINAL 

shepherds, made of fine cloth of gold and fine crimson satin paned, 
and caps of the same, with visors of good proportion of visnomy; 
their hairs, and beards, either of fine gold wire, or else of silver, and 
some being of black silk ; having sixteen torch-bearers, besides their 
drums, and other persons attending upon them, with visors, and 
clothed all in satin, of the same colours. And at his coming, and 
before he came into the hall, ye shall understand, that he came by 
water to the water gate, without any noise: where, against his 
coming, were laid charged, many chambers*, and at his landing they 
were all shot off, which made such a rumble in the air, that it was like 
thunder. It made all the noblemen, ladies, and gentlewomen, to 
muse what it should mean coming so suddenly, they sitting quietly 
at a solemn banquet ; under this sort: First, ye shall perceive that 
the tables were set in the chamber of presence, banquet-wise covered, 
my Lord Cardinal sitting under the cloth of estate, and there having 
his service all alone; and then was there set a lady and a nobleman, 
or a gentleman and gentlewoman, throughout all the tables in the 
chamber on the one side, which were made and joined as it were but 
one table. All which order and device was done and devised by the 
Lord Sands, Lord Chamberlain to the King; and also by Sir Henry 
Guildford, Comptroller to the King. Then immediately after this 
great shot of guns, the Cardinal desired the Lord Chamberlain and 
Comptroller to look what this sudden shot should mean, as though 
he knew nothing of the matter. They thereupon looking out of the 
windows into Thames, returned again, and showed him that it seemed 
to them there should be some noblemen and strangers arrived at his 
bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince. With that, quoth 
the Cardinal, ' I shall desire you, because ye can speak French, to 
take the pains to go down into the hall to encounter and to receive 
them, according to their estates, and to conduct them into this cham- 
ber, where they shall see us, and all these noble personages sitting 
merrily at our banquet, desiring them to sit down with us, and to 
take part of our fare and pastime.' Then [they] went incontinent 
down into the hall, where they received them with near twenty 
new torches, and conveyed them up into the chamber, with such a 
number of drums and fifes as I have seldom seen together at one 
time, in any masque. At their arrival into the chamber, two and two 
together, they went directly before the Cardinal where he sat, saluting 
him very reverently; to whom the Lord Chamberlain for them said ; 
' Sir, for as much as they be strangers, and can speak no English, 
they have desired me to declare unto your Grace thus : they, having 
understanding of this your triumphant banquet, where was assembled 
such a number of excellent fair dames, could do no less, under the sup- 
portation of your good Grace, but to repair hither to view as well as 
their incomparable beauty, as for to accompany them at mumchancef, 

* Chambers, short guns, or cannon, standing upon their breaching 
without carriages, chiefly used for festive occasions; and having their 
name most probably from being little more than chambers for powder. 
It was by the discharge of these chambers in the play of Henry VHIth. 
that the Globe Theatre was burnt in 1613. Shakspeare followed 
pretty closely the narrative of Cavendish. — Singer. 

f Mumchance appears to have been a game played with dice, a$ 
which silence was to be observed,— Singer. 



At YORK PLACE. 393 

and then after to dance with them, and so to have of them acquaint- 
ance. And, sir, they furthermore require of your Grace license to 
accomplish the cause of their repair.' To whom the Cardinal an- 
swered, that he was very well contented that they should do so. Then 
the maskers went first and saluted, all the dames as they sat, and. then 
returned to the most worthiest, and there opened a cup full of gold, 
with crowns and other pieces of coin, to whom they set divers pieces 
to cast at. Thus in this manner perusing all the ladies and gentle- 
women, and to some they lost, and of some they won. And this done, 
they returned unto the Cardinal, with great reverence, pouring down 
all the crowns into the cup, which was ahout two hundred crowns. 
* At all,' quoth the Cardinal, and so cast the dice, and won them all 
at a cast ; whereat was great joy made. Then quoth the Cardinal 
to my Lord Chamberlain, ' I pray you,' quoth he, ' show them that it 
seemeth me that there should be among them some noble man, whom 
I suppose to be much more worthy of honour to sit and occupy this 
room and place than I; to whom I would most gladly, if I knew him, 
surrender my place, according to my duty.' Then spake my Lord 
Chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my Lord Cardinal's 
mind, and they rounding him again in the ear, my Lord Chamberlain 
said to my Lord Cardinal, ' Sir, they confess,' quoth he, ' that among 
them there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace can 
appoint him from the other, he is contented to disclose himself, and to 
accept your place most worthily.' With that the Cardinal, taking a 
good advisement among them, at the last, quoth he, * me seemeth the 
gentleman with the black beard should be even he.' And with that 
he arose out of his chair, and offered the same to the gentleman in the 
black beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom he 
offered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight of a 
goodly personage,* that much more resembled the King's person in that 
mask than any other. The King, hearing and perceiving the Cardinal 
so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not forbear laughing ; 
but plucked down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashedf 
out with such a plesant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates 
there assembled, seeing the King to be there amongst them, rejoiced 
very much. The Cardinal eftsoons desired his highness to take the 
place of estate, to whom the King answered, that he would go first 
and shift his apparel; and so departed, and went straight into my 
lord's bedchamber, where was a great fire made and prepared for 
him; and there new apparelled him with rich and princely garments. 
And in the time of the King's absence the dishes of the banquet were 
clean taken up, and the tables spread again with new and sweet per- 
fumed clothes; every man sitting still until the King and his maskers 
came in among them again, every man being newly apparelled. Then 
the King took his seat under the cloth of state, commanding no man 
to remove, but sit still, as they did before. Then in came a new 
banquet before the King's majesty, and to' all the rest through the 
tables, wherein, I suppose, were served two hundred dishes or above, 

* Probably a handsomer figure than the King. This (though not the 
subtlest imaginable) would be likely to be among Wolsey's court- 
tricks, and modes of gaining favour. 

f This "dashed out" is in the best style of bluff King Hal, ani 
Capitally well said by Caivendigh, 



394 ANNE BULLEN. 

of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtilly devised. Thus passed 
they forth the whole night with banqueting, dancing, and other 
triumphant devices, to the great comfort of the King, and pleasant 
regard of the nobility there assembled. 

'■' All this matter I have declared at large, because ye shall under- 
stand what joy and delight the Cardinal had to see his Prince and 
sovereign Lord in his house so nobly entertained and pleased, which 
was always his only study, to devise things to his comfort, not passing 
of the charges or expenses. It delighted him so much, to have the 
King's pleasant princely presence, that nothing was to him more 
delectable than to cheer his sovereign lord, to whom he owed so much 
obedience and loyalty, as reason required no less, all things well con- 
sidered. 

" Thus passed the Cardinal his life and time, from day to day, and 
year to year, in such great wealth, joy, and triumph, and glory, having 
always on his side the King's especial favour; until Fortune, of whose 
favour no man is longer assured than she is disposed, began to wax 
something wroth with his prosperous estate [and] thought she would 
devise a mean to abate his high port; wherefore she procured Venus, 
the insatiate Goddess, to be her instrument. To work her purpose, 
she brought the King in love with a gentlewoman, that, after she 
perceived and felt the King's goodwill towards her, and how diligent 
he was both to please her, and to grant all her requests, she wrought 
the Cardinal much displeasure ; as hereafter shall be more at large 
declared." 

Pretty Anne Bullen completed the ruin of Wolsey for having 
thwarted her, and not long afterwards was sent out of this very 
house from which she ousted him, to the scaffold, herself ruined 
by another rival. On the Cardinal's downfall, Henry seized 
his house and goods, and converted York Place into a royal 
residence, under the title of Westminster Place, then, for the 
first time, called also Whitehall. 

" It is not impossible," says Mr. Brayley (Londiniana, vol. ii., p. 27.) 
" that the Whitehall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and 
obtained its name from the newness and freshness of its appearance, 
when compared with the ancient buildings of York Place. Shaks- 
peare, in his play of King Henry VIII., makes one of the interlocutors 
say, in describing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn : — 

' So she parted, 
And with the same full state paced back again 
To York Place, where the feast is held.' 

To this is replied — 

* Sir, you 
Must no more call it York Place — that is past. 
Por since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost. 
'lis now the King's, and called Whitehall.' " 

It is curious to observe the links between ancient names and 
their modern representatives, and the extraordinary contrast 
sometimes exhibited between the two. The " Judge," who by 



£~ 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 



395 



Henry's orders went to turn Wolsey out of his house, without 
any other form of law — a proceeding which excited even the 
fallen slave to a remonstrance — was named Shelly, and was 
one of the ancestors of the poet! the most independent-minded 
and generous of men. 




CHAPTER XI. 

Henry the Eighth — His Person and Character — Modern Qualifications 
of it considered — Passages respecting him from Lingard, Sir Thomas 
Wyatt, and others — His additions to Whitehall — A Retrospect at 
Elizabeth — Court of James resumed — Its gross Habits — Letter of 
Sir John Harrington respecting them — James's Drunkenness — 
Testimonies of Welldon, Sully, and Koger Coke — Curious Omission 
in the Invective of Churchill the Poet — Welldon's Portrait of 
James — Buckingham, the Favourite— Frightful Story of Somerset 
— Masques — Banqueting House — Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson — 
Court of Charles the First — Cromwell — Charles the Second — James 
the Second. 

E have said more about Wolsey than we 
intend to say of Henry the Eighth ; for 
the son of the butcher was a great man, 
and his master was only a king. Henry, 
born a prince, became a butcher ; 
Wolsey, a butcher, became a prince. 
And we are not playing upon the word 
as applied to the king ; for Henry was 
not only a butcher of his wives, he 
resembled a brother of the trade in its better and more ordi- 
nary course. His pleasures were of the same order; his Ian- 




396 HENRY THE EIGHTH; 

guage was coarse and jovial; he had the very straddle of a 
fat butcher, as he stands in his doorway. Take any picture 
or statue of Henry the Eighth — fancy its cap off, and a knife 
in its girdle, and it seems in the very act of saying, " What 
d'ye buy? What d'ye buy ?" There is even the petty com- 
placency in the mouth, after the phrase is uttered. 

And how formidable is that petty unfeeling mouth, in the 
midst of those wide and wilful cheeks ! Disturb the self- 
satisfaction of that man, derange his bile for an instant, make 
him suppose that you do not quite think him 

" Wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," 

and what hope have you from the sentence of that mass of 
pampered egotism ? 

Let us not do injustice, however, even to the doers of it. 
What better was to be looked for, in those times, from the 
circumstances under which Henry was born and bred — from 
the son of a wilful father, and an unfeeling state marriage — 
from the educated combiner of church and state, instinctively 
led to entertain the worldliest notions of both, and of heaven 
itself — from the inheritor of the greatest wealth, and power, 
and irresponsibility, ever yet concentrated in an English 
sovereign ? It has been attempted of late by various writers 
(and the attempt is a good symptom, being on the charitable 
side,) to make out a case for Henry the Eighth, as if he were a 
sort of rough but honest fellow, a kind of John Bull of that 
age, who meant well upon the whole, and thought himself 
bound to keep up the conventionalities of his country. We 
know not what compliment is intended to be implied by this, 
either to Henry or his countrymen ; but really when a man 
sends his wives, one after the other, to the scaffold, evidently 
as much to enable him to marry another as to vindicate any 
propriety — when he "cuts" and sacrifices his best friends and 
servants, and pounces upon their goods — when he takes every 
license himself, though he will not allow others even to be 
suspected of it — when he grows a brute beast in size as well 
as in habits, and dies shedding superfluous blood to the last — 
we cannot, for our parts, as Englishmen, but be glad of some 
better excuses for him of the kind above stated, than such as 
are to be found in the roots of the national character, however 
jovial. Imagine only the endearments that must have passed 
between this man and Anne Bullen, and then fancy the heart 
that could have sent the poor little, hysterical, half-laughing, 



HIS VANITY AND TYRANNY. 897 

half-crying thing to the scaffold ! The man was mad with 
power and vanity. That is his real excuse. 

It has been said, that all which he did was done by law, 
or at least under the forms of it, and by the consent, some- 
times by the recommendation, of his statesmen. The asser- 
tion is not true in all instances ; and where it is, what does it 
prove but that his tyrannical spirit had helped to make his 
statesmen slaves? They knew what he wished, and noto- 
riously played the game into his hands. When they did not, 
their heads went off. That circumstances had spoilt them 
altogether, and that society, with all its gaudiness, was but in 
a half-barbarous state, is granted ; but it is no less true, that 
his office, his breeding, and his natural temper, conspired to 
make Henry the worst and most insolent of a violent set of 
men ; and he stands straddling out accordingly in history, as 
he does in his pictures, an image of sovereign brutality. 

Excessive vanity, aggravated by all the habits of despotism 
and luxury, and accompanied, nevertheless, by that uncon- 
scious misgiving which is natural to inequalities between a 
man's own powers and those which he derives from his posi- 
tion, is the clue to the character of Henry the Eighth. 
Accordingly, no man gave greater ear to tale-bearers and 
sowers of suspicion, nor resented more cruelly or meanly the 
wounds inflicted on his self-love, even by those who least 
intended them, or to whom he had shown the greatest fond- 
ness. The latter, indeed, he treated the worst, out of a frenzy 
of egotistical disappointment ; for his love arose, not from any 
real regard for their merits, but from what he had taken for 
a flattery to his own. Sir Thomas More knew him well, 
when, in observation to some one who had congratulated him 
on the King's having walked up and down with his arm 
around his neck, he said that he would have that neck cut in 
two next day, if the head belonging to it opposed his will. 
He not only took back without scruple all that he had given 
to Wolsey, but he went to live in the houses of his fallen 
friend and servant — places which a man of any feeling and 
kindly remembrance would have avoided. He was very near 
picking a murderous quarrel with his last wife, Catherine 
Parr, on one of his theological questions. And how did he 
conduct himself to the memory of poor Anne Bullen, even on 
the day of her execution? Hear Lingard, who, though no 
partizan of his, thinks he must have had some heinous cause 
of provocation, to induce him to behave so roughly : — , 



398 HENRY THE EIGHTH; 

"Thus fell," says the historian, "this unfortunate Queen within 
four months after the death of Catherine. To have expressed a doubt 
of her guilt during the reign of Henry, or of her innocence during 
that of Elizabeth, would have been deemed a proof of disaffection. 
The question soon became one of religious feeling, rather than of 
historical disquisition. Though she had departed no farther than her 
husband from the ancient doctrine, yet, as her marriage with Henry 
led to the separation from the communion of Rome, the Catholic 
writers were eager to condemn, the Protestant to exculpate her 
memory. In the absence of those documents which alone could 
enable us to decide with truth, I will only observe that the King 
must have been impelled by some powerful motive to exercise against 
her such extraordinary, and, in one supposition, such superfluous 
vigour. Had his object been (we are sometimes told that it was) to 
place Jane Seymour by his side on the throne, the divorce of Anne 
without execution, or the execution without the divorce, would have 
effected his purpose. But he seemed to have pursued her with in- 
satiable hatred. Not content with taking her life, he made her feel 
in every way in which a wife and a mother could feel. He stamped 
on her character the infamy of adultery and incest ; he deprived her 
of the name and right of wife and Queen ; and he even bastardized 
her daughter, though he acknowledged that daughter to be his own. 
If then he were not assured of her guilt, he must have discovered in 
her conduct some most heinous cause of provocation, which he never 
disclosed. He had wept at the death of Catherine (of Arragon) ; but, 
as if he sought to display his contempt for the character of Anne, he 
dressed himself in white on the day of her execution, and was married 
to Jane Seymour the next morning."* 

Now, nothing could be more indecent and unmanly than 
such conduct as this, let Anne have been guilty as she might; 
and nothing, in such a man, but mortified self-love could 
account for it. Probably he had discovered, that in some of 
her moments of levity she had laughed at him. But not to 
love him would have been offence enough. It would have 
been the first time he had discovered the possibility of such 
an impiety towards his barbarous divinityship : and his rage 
must needs have been unbounded. 

What Providence may intend by such instruments, is one 
thing : what we are constituted to think of them, is another : 
charitably, no doubt, when we think our utmost ; but still 
with a discrimination, for fear of consequences. As to what 
was thought of Henry in his own time or afterwards, we must 
not rely on the opinion of Baker, Holinshed, and other servile 
chroniclers, of mean understanding and time-serving habits, 
who were the least honourable kind of " waiters upon Provi- 
dence," taking the commonest appearances of adversity and 
prosperity (so to speak) for vice and virtue, and flattering 
* Lingard, vol. iv., p. 246. (Quarto Edit.) 



Passages respecting him prom wyat, <&c. 399 

every arbitrary and conventional opinion, as though it were 
not to perish in its turn. We are to recollect what More said 
of him (as above) in his confidential moments and Wolsey in 
his agony, and Pole and others, when, having got to a safe 
distance, they returned him foul language for his own 
bullying, and blustered out what was thought of him by 
those who knew him thoroughly. Observe also the manifest 
allusions in what was written upon the court of those days, 
by one of the wisest and best of its ornaments, Sir Thomas 
Wyat — a friend of Anne Bullen's. The verses are entitled, 
" Of a Courtier's Life," and it may be observed, by the way, 
that they furnish the second example, in the English lan- 
guage, of the use of the Italian rime terzette, or triplets, in 
which Dante's poem is written, and which had been first 
introduced among us by Sir Thomas's friend, the Earl of 
Surrey (another of Henry's victims) : — 

Mine owne John Poynes, sins ye delight to know 
The causes why that homeward I me draw 
And flee the prease of courtes whereso they goe, 
Rather than to live thrall under the awe 
Of lordly lookes, wrapped within my cloke, 
To will and lust learning to set a law, 
It is not, that because I storme or mocke 

The power of those whom fortune here hath lent 
Charge over us, of right to strike the stroke ; 
But true it is, that I have alway ment 

Less to esteeme them, than the common sort 
Of outward thinges that judge in their entent ; 
* * # # 

My Poynes, I cannot frame my tong to fayn, 
To cloke the truth, for praise, without desert, 
Of them that list all vice for to retayne ; 

I cannot honour them that set theyr part 

With Venus and with Bacchus their life long, 
Nor hold my peace of them although I smart 

I cannot crouch, nor kneele to such a wrong, 

To WORSHIP THEM LIKE GOD ON EARTH ALONE, 

That are as wolves these sely lambs among. 
(Here was a sigh perhaps to the memory of his poor friend 
Anne): — 

I cannot wrest the law to fyll the coffer 
With innocent blood to feed myselfe/a£, 
And do most hurt where that most help I offer 
I am not he that can allow the state 
Of hye Caesar, and damn Cato to die ; 
(an allusion probably to Sir Thomas More). 

Affirm that favill (fable-lying) hathe a goodly grace 
In eloquence, and cruelty to name 
Zeale of justice, and change in time and place ; 
And he that suffreth offence without blame, 



400 HENRY THE EIGHTH. 

Call him pitiefull, and him true andplayne. 
That raylest reckless unto each man's shame ; 
Say he is rude, that cannot lye and fayne, 
The lecher a lover, and tyranny 
To BE RIGHT OF A PRINCE'S RAIGNE ; 

I cannot, I ; — no, no ; — it will not he ; 

This is the cause that I could never yet 

Hang on their sleeves, that weigh, as thou maist see> 
A chippe of chaunce more than a pound of wit ; 

This makes me at home to hunt and hawke, 

And in foul weather at my book to sit ; 
In frost and snowe, then with my howe stalke ; 

No man doth marke whereso I ryde or goe ; 

In lustie leas at libertie I walke. 

Towards the conclusion, he says he does not spend his time 
among those who have their wits taken away with Flanders 
cheer and " beastliness :" — 

Nor I am not, where truth is given in prey 
For money, and prison and treason of some 

A common practice used night and day ; 

But I am here in Kent and Christendom, 

Among the Muses, where I read and ryme ; 
Where if thou list, mine owne John Poynes, to come, 

Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time. 

Among the poems of Surrey, is a sonnet in reproach of 
11 Sardanapalus," which probably came to the knowledge of 
Henry, and may have been intended to do so. 

It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted 
marriage with Anne Bullen; Dr. Lingard says in a "garret;" 
Stowe says in the royal " closet." It is likely enough that 
the ceremony was hurried and sudden ; — a fit of will, perhaps, 
during his wine ; and if the closet was not ready, the garret 
was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards 
made a bishop. 

Henry died in Whitehall ; so fat, that he was lifted in and 
out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery. 

He was " somewhat gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie," says 
time-serving Holinshed.* 

" He laboured under the burden of an extreme fat and un- 
wieldy body," says noble Herbert of Cherbury.f 

" The king," says Lingard, " had long indulged without restraint in 
the pleasures of the table. At last he grew so enormously corpulent, 
that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor remove 
without the aid of machinery into the different apartments of his 
palace. Even the fatigue of subscribing his name to the writings 

♦ Vol. iii., p. 862, Edit. 1808. | Folio edit 



WHITEHALL IN OLDEN TIME. 



401 



which required his signature, was more than he could bear; and to 
relieve him from this duty, three commissioners were appointed, of 
whom two had authority to apply to the paper a dry stamp, bearing 
the letters of the king's name, and the third to draw a pen furnished 
with ink over the blank impression. An inveterate ulcer in the thigh 
which had more than once threatened his life, and which now seemed 
to baffle all the skill of the surgeons, added to the irascibility of his 
temper." * 

It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace 




HOLBEIN S GATE OP WHITEHALL PALACE. 

of the Archbishop of York first became the " King's Palace at 
Westminster," and expanded into that mass of houses which 

* Ut supra, p. 347. Henry had been afflicted with this ulcer a long 
while. He was in danger from it during his marriage with Anne 
Bullen. It should be allowed him among his excuses of tempera- 
ment; but then it should also have made him more considerate 
towards his wives. It never enters the heads, however, of such people 
that their faults or infirmities are to go for anything, except to make 
others considerate for them, and warrant whatever humours they 
choose to indulge. 

D D 



402 EDWARD THE SIXTH. 

stretched to St. James's Park. He built a gate-house which 
stood across what is now the open street, and a gallery con- 
necting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard ; and on 
the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys for 
bowling ; for although he put women to death, he was fond of 
manly sports. He was also a patron of the fine arts ; and 
gave an annuity and rooms in the palace to the celebrated 
Holbein, who is said to have designed the gate, as well as 
decorated the interior. It is to Holbein we are indebted for 
our familiar acquaintance with his figure. 

The reader is to bear in mind, that the street in front of the 
modern Banqueting-house was always open, as it is now, from 
Charing Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south 
end of the Banqueting-house, at which point the gate looked 
up it towards the Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-house, 
on the site of the present Horse Guards, was the Tilt-yard. 
The whole mass of houses and gardens on the river side com- 
prised the royal residence. Down this open street then, just 
as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry 
coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly ; 
Sir Thomas More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with 
quiet-faced Erasmus ; Holbein, looking about him with an 
artist's eyes ; Surrey coming gallantly in his cloak and 
feather, as Holbein has painted him ; and a succession of 
Henry's wives, with their flitting groups on horseback or 
under canopy ; — handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon ; 
laughing Anne Bullen ; quiet Jane Seymour ; gross-bodied 
but sensible Anne of Cleves ; demure Catherine Howard, who 
played such pranks before marriage ; and disputatious yet 
buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant, to become 
the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, 
also, came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the 
tilting-yard ; but of them we shall have more to say in the 
time of Elizabeth. 

We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane 
Grey and Queen Mary, in connection with Whitehall. Edward 
once held the Parliament there, on account of his sickly con- 
dition ; and he used to hear Latimer preach in the Privy 
garden (still so called), where a pulpit was erected for him on 
purpose. As there are gardens there still to the houses erected 
on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we hear 
the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising 
through the trees. 



LADY JANE GREY.— MARY. 403 

Edward has the reputation usually belonging to young and 
untried sovereigns, and very likely deserves some of it ; cer- 
tainly not all — as Mr. Sharon Turner, one of the most con- 
siderate of historians, has shown. He partook of the obstinacy 
of his father, which was formalised in him by weak health 
and a precise education ; and though he shed tears when pre- 
vailed upon to assign poor Joan of Kent to what he thought 
her eternity of torment, his faults assuredly did not lie on the 
side of an excess of feeling, as may be seen by the cool way 
in which he suffered his uncles to go to the scaffold, one after 
another, and recorded it in the journal which he kept. He 
would probably have turned out a respectable, but not an 
admirable sovereign, nor one of an engaging character. Years 
do not improve a temperament like his. 

Even poor Lady Jane Grey's character does not improve 
upon inspection. The Tudor blood (she was grand-daughter 
of Henry's sister) manifested itself in her by her sudden love 
of supremacy the moment she felt a crown on her head, and 
her preferring to squabble with her husband and his relations 
(who got it her), rather than let him partake her throne. She 
insisted he should be only a Duke, and suspected that his 
family had given her poison for it. This undoes the usual 
romance of "Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley ;" 
— and thus it is that the possession of too much power spoils 
almost every human being, practical or theoretical. Lady 
Jane came out of the elegancies and tranquillities of the 
schools, and of her Greek and Latin, to find her Platonisms 
vanish before a dream of royalty. She rediscovered them, 
however, when it was over ; and that is something. She was 
brought up a slave, and therefore bred to be despotic in her 
turn ; but habit, vanity, and good sense alike contributed to 
restore her to the better part of herself at the last moment. 

We confess we pity " Bloody Mary," as she has been called, 
almost as much as any unfortunate sovereign on record. She 
caused horrible and odious suffering, but she also suffered 
horribly herself, and became odious where she would fain 
bave been loved. She had a bigoted education and a com- 
plexional melancholy ; was stunted in person, plain in face, 
with impressive but gloomy eyes ; a wife with affections 
unrequited ; and a persecuting, unpopular, but conscientious 
sovereign. She derived little pleasure apparently from having 
her way, even in religious matters ; but acted as she did out 
of a narrow sense of duty ; and she proved her honesty, how- 

PD2 



404: RETROSPECT AT ELIZABETH. 

ever perverted, by a perpetual anxiety and uneasiness. When 
did a charitable set of opinions ever inflict upon honest natures 
these miseries of an intolerant one ? 

It was under Elizabeth that Whitehall shone out in all its 
romantic splendour. It was no longer the splendour of Wolsey 
alone, nor of Henry alone, or with a great name by his side 
now and then ; but of a Queen, surrounded and worshipped 
through a long reign by a galaxy of the brightest minds and 
most chivalrous persons ever assembled in English history. 

Here she comes, turning round the corner from the Strand, 
under a canopy of state, leaving the noisier, huzzaing multi- 
tude behind the barriers that mark the precincts of the palace, 
and bending her eyes hither and thither, in acknowledgment 
of the kneeling obeisances of the courtiers. Beside her are 
Cecil and Knolles, and Northampton, and Bacon's father ; or, 
later in life, Leicester, and Burleigh, and Sir Philip Sidney, 
and Greville, and Sir Francis Drake (and Spenser is looking 
on) ; or, later still, Essex, and Ealeigh, and Bacon himself, 
and Southampton, Shakspeare's friend, with Shakspeare 
among the spectators. We shall see her by and by, at that 
period, as brought to life to us in the description of Heutzner 
the traveller. At present (as we have her at this moment in 
our eye) she is younger, of a large and tall, but well-made 
figure, with fine eyes, and finer hands, which she is fond of 
displaying. We are too apt to think of Elizabeth as thin and 
elderly, and patched up ; but for a good period of her life she 
was plump and personable, warranting the history of the 
robust romps of the Lord Admiral, Seymour ; and till her 
latter days (and even then, as far as her powers went), we 
are always to fancy her at once spirited and stately of car- 
riage, impulsive (except on occasions of ordinary ceremony), 
and ready to manifest her emotions in look and voice, 
whether as woman or Queen ; in a word, a sort of Henry 
the Eighth corrected by a female nature and a better under- 
standing — or perhaps an Anne Bullen, enlarged, and made 
less feminine, by the father's grossness. The Protestants 
have represented her as too staid, and the Catholics as too 
violent and sensual. According to the latter, Whitehall was 
a mere sink of iniquity. It was not likely to be so, for many 
reasons ; but neither, on the other hand, do we take it to have 
been anything like the pattern of self-denial which some fond 
writers have supposed. WTiere there is power, and leisure, 
and luxury, though of the most legitimate kind, and refine^ 



EeTrOSFECT AT ELIZABETH. 405 

ment, though of the most intellectual, self-denial on the side 
of enjoyment is not apt to be the reigning philosophy ; nor 
would it reasonably be looked for in any court, at all living 
in wealth and splendour. 

Imagine the sensations of Elizabeth, when she first set 
down in the palace at Whitehall, after escaping the perils of 
imputed illegitimacy, of confinement for party's sake and for 
religion's, and all the other terrors of her father's reign and 
of Mary's, danger of death itself not excepted. She was a 
young Queen of twenty-five years of age, healthy, sprightly, 
good-looking, with plenty of will, power, and imagination ; 
and the gallantest spirits of the age were at her feet. How 
pitiable, and how respectable, become almost all sovereigns, 
when we consider them as human beings put in possession of* 
almost superhuman power; and when we reflect in general 
how they have been brought up, and what a provocative to 
abuse at all events becomes the possession of a throne ! We 
in general spoil them first ; — we always tempt them to take 
every advantage, by worshipping them as if they were dif- 
ferent creatures from ourselves ; — and then we are astonished 
that they should take us at our word. How much better 
would it be to be astonished at the likeness they retain to us, 
even in the kindlier part of our weaknesses. 

By a very natural process, considering the great and 
chivalrous men of that day, Elizabeth became at once one of 
the greatest of Queens and one of the most flattered and vain 
of women. Nor were the courtiers so entirely insincere as 
they are supposed to have been, when they worshipped her as 
they did, and gave her credit for all the beauty and virtue 
under heaven. On the contrary, the power to benefit them 
went hand-in-hand with their self-love to give them a sincere 
though extravagant notion of their mistress ; and the romantic 
turn of the age and its literature, its exploits, its poetry, all con- 
spired to warm and sanction the enthusiasm on both sides, and 
to blind the admiration to those little outward defects, and in- 
ward defects too, which love at all periods is famous for over- 
looking — nay, for converting into noble grounds of denial, and 
of subjection to a sentiment. Thus Elizabeth's hook nose, 
her red hair, nay, her very age and crookedness at last, did 
not stand in the way of raptures at her " beauty" and " divine 
perfections," any more than a flaw in the casket that held a 
jewel. The spirit of love and beauty was there; the appre- 
ciation of the soul of both; the glory of exciting, and of 



40G COURTLY ADULATION OF ELIZABETH. 

giving, the glorification ; — and all the rest was a trifle, an 
accident, a mortal show of things, which no gentleman and 
lady can help. The Queen might even swear a good round 
oath or so occasionally; and what did it signify? It was a 
pleasant ebullition of the authority which is above taxation ; 
the Queen swore, and not the woman ; or if the woman did, 
it was only an excess of feeling proper to balance the account, 
and to bring her royalty down to a level with good hearty 
human nature. 

It has been said, that as Elizabeth advanced in life, the 
courtiers dropped the mention of her beauty; but this is a 
mistake. They were more sparing in the mention of it, but 
when they spoke they were conscious that the matter was not 
to be minced. When her Majesty was in her sixty-second 
year, the famous Earl of Essex gave her an entertainment, in 
the course of which she was complimented on her " beauty' 1 '' and 
dazzling outside, in speeches written for the occasion by Lord, 
then " Mr. Francis, Bacon." * Sir John Davies, another lawyer, 
who was not born till she was near forty, and could not have 
written his acrostical " Hymns" upon her till she was elderly, 
celebrates her as awakening " thoughts of young love," and 
being " beauty's rose indeed ;"■{• and it is well known that she 
was at a reverend time of life when Sir Walter Raleigh wrote 
upon her like a despairing lover, calling her " Yenus " and 
" Diana," and saying he could not exist out of her presence. 

At the entrance from Whitehall to St. James's Park, where 
deer were kept, was the following inscription, recorded by 
Heutzner, the German traveller : — 

" The fisherman who has been wounded learns, though late, to 
beware : 

But the unfortunate Actaeon always presses on. 
The chaste Virgin naturally pitied ; 

But the powerful Goddess revenged the wrong. 
Let Actaeon fall a prey to his dogs, 

An example to youth, 
A disgrace to those that belong to him ! 

May Diana live the care of Heaven, 
The delight of mortals, 

The security of those that belong to her." 

Walpole thinks that this inscription alluded to Philip the 

* Nicholls's "Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth," 
year 1595, pp. 4-8. "He will ever bear in his heart the picture of 
her beauty." " He now looks on his mistress's outside with the eyes 
of sense, which are dazzled and amased." 

f See the poems in Anderson's Edition, vol. ii., p. 706. 



ROYAL STATE OF ELIZABETH. 407 

Second, who courted Elizabeth after her sister's death, and to 
the destruction of his Armada. It might ; but it implied also 
a pretty admonition to youth in general, and to those who 
ventured to pry into the goddess's retreats. 

It was about the time of Essex's entertainment that the 
same traveller gives the following minute and interesting 
account of her Majesty's appearance, and of the superhuman 
way in which her very dinner-table was worshipped. He is 
describing the manner in which she went to chapel at 
Greenwich : — 

" First went Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all 
richly dressed and bare-headed ; next came the Chancellor, hearing 
the seals in a silk purse, between two, one of which carried the royal 
sceptre, the other the sword of state in a red scabbard, studded with 
golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards ; next came the Queen, in the 
fifty- sixth year of her age (as we were told), very majestic ; her face 
oblong, fair but wrinkled ; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant ; 
her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect 
the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar); she 
had in her ears two very rich pearls with drops ; she wore false hair, 
and that red : upon her head she had a small crown, reported to have 
been made of some of the gold of the celehrated Lunebourg table ; her 
bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they 
marry ; and she had on a neckHce of exceeding fine jewels ; her 
hands were small, her fingers long; and her stature neither tall nor 
low; her air was stately ; her manner of speaking mild and obliging. 
The day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the 
size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads ; 
her train was very long, the end of it borne by a Marchioness ; instead 
of a chain, she had on an oblong collar of gold and jewels. As she 
went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, 
first to one and then to another (whether foreign ministers, or those 
who attended for different reasons), in English, French, or Italian; 
for besides being very well skilled in Greek and Latin, and the lan- 
guages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and 
Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling ; now and then she 
raises some with her hand. While we were there, William Slawater, 
a Bohemian Baron, had letters to present to her, and she, after pulling 
off her glove, gave him her right hand to kiss, sparkling with rings 
and jewels, a mark of particular favour. Whenever she turned her 
face as she was going along, everybody'fell down on their knees. The 
ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well 
shaped, and for the most part dressed in white. She was guarded on 
each side by the Gentlemen Pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt 
battle-axes. In the ante-chamber next the hall, where we were, 
petitions were presented to her, and she received them most graciously, 
which occasioned the acclamation of 'God Save the Queen Elizabeth ! ' 
She answered it with 'I thanke youe, myne good peupel.' In the 
chapel was excellent music; as soon as it and the service was over, 
which scarce exceeded half an hour, the Queen returned in the same 
state by wattr, and prepared to go to dinner. 



408 CHARACTER AND HABITS OF ELIZABETH. 

" A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him 
another bearing a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled 
three times with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table, 
and after kneeling again they both retired; then came two others, 
one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and 
bread; when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed 
what was brought upon the table, they too retired with the same 
ceremonies performed by the first : at last came an unmarried lady, 
(we were told she was a Countess), and along with her a married one, 
bearing a tasting knife ; the former was dressed in white silk, who 
when she had prostrated herself three times in the most graceful 
manner, approachpd the table, and rubbed the table with bread and 
salt, with as much awe as if the Queen had been present. When 
they had waited there a little while, the Yeoman of the Guard 
entered, bare headed, clothed in scarlet with golden roses upon their 
backs, bringing in each turn a course of dishes, served in plate, 
most of it gilt. These dishes were received by a gentleman in the 
same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the 
lady taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the particular 
dish he had brought, for fear of any poison. During the time that 
this guard (which consist of the tallest and stoutest men that can be 
found in all England, being carefully selected for this service), were 
bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle drums made the hall 
ring for half an hour together. At the end of all this ceremonial a 
number of unmarried ladies appeared, who with particular solemnity 
lifted the meat from the table and conveyed it to the Queen's inner 
and more private chamber, where after she had chosen for herself, the 
next goes to the ladies of the court. 

" The queen dines and sups alone, with very few attendants; and 
it is very seldom that anybody, foreigner or native, is admitted at that 
time, and then only at the intercession of somebody in power." * 

A " Character of Queen Elizabeth," written by Edmund 
Bohun, Esq., published in " Nichols's Progresses," has given 
the following account of her daily habits : — 

" Before day, every morning, she heard the petitions of those that 
had any business with her, and, calling her secretaries of state, and 
masters of requests, she caused the order of councils, proclamations, 
patents, and ail other papers relating to the public, to be read, whicli 
were then depending; and gave such order in each affair as she 
thought fit, which was set down in short notes, either by herself, or 
her secretaries. As often as anything happened that was difficult, 
she called her great and wise men to her; and proposing the diversity 
of opinions, she very attentively considered and weighed on which 
side the strongest reason lay, ever preferring that way which seemed 
most to promote the public safety and welfare. When she was thus 
wearied with her morning work, she would take a walk, if the sun 
shined, into her garden, or otherwise in her galleries, especially in 
windy or rainy weather. She would then cause Stanhop, or Sir 

* From an article in the second volume of that elegant and interest- 
ing publication, the "Retrospective Review;" the discontinuance of 
which, some years back, was regretted by every lover of literature. 



CHARACTER AND HABITS OP ELIZABETH 409 

Henry Savill, or some other learned man, to be called to walk with 
her, and entertain her with some learned subject; the rest of the day 
she spent in private, reading history, or some other learning, with 
great care and attention ; not out of ostentation, and a vain ambition 
of being always learning something, but out of a diligent care to 
enable herself thereby to live the better, and to avoid sin; and she 
would commonly have some learned man with her, or near her, to 
assist her ; whose labour and industry she would well reward. Thus 
she spent her winter. 

" In the summer time, when she was hungry, she would eat some- 
thing that was of light and easy digestion, in her chamber, with the 
windows open to admit the gentle breezes of wind from the gardens 
or pleasant hills. Sometimes she would do this alone, but more 
commonly she would have her friends with her then. When she 
had thus satisfied her hunger and thirst with a moderate repast, she 
would rest awhile upon an Indian couch, curiously and richly 
covered. In the winter time she observed the same order; but she 
omitted her noon sleep. When her day was thus spent, she went 
late to supper, which was ever sparing, and very moderate. At 
supper she would divert herself with her friends and attendants; and 
if they made her no answer, she would put them upon mirth and 
pleasant discourse with great civility. She would also then admit 
Tarleton, a famous comedian and a pleasant talker, and other such 
like men, to divert her with stories of the town, and the common jests 
or accidents; but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and 
chastity. In the winter time, after supper, she would sometimes hear 
a song, or a lesson or two played upon the lute; but she would be 
much offended if there was any rudeness to any person, any reproach 
or licentious reflection used. Tarleton, who was then the best 
comedian in England, had made a pleasant play; and when it was 
acted before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Eawleigh, and said, 
— ' See, the knave commands the Queen ;' for which he was corrected 
by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add, that 
he was of too much and too intolerable a power ; and going on with 
the same liberty was so universally applauded by all that were 
present, that she thought fit for the present to bear these reflections 
with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended, that 
she forbad Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, 
being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unreasonable 
liberty. She would talk with learned men that had travelled, in the 
presence of many, and ask them many questions concerning the 
government, customs, and discipline used abroad. She loved a 
natural jester, that would tell a story pleasantly, and humour it with 
his countenance, and gesture, and voice ; but she hated all those 
praters who made bold with other men's reputation, or defamed 
them. She detested, as ominous and unfortunate, all dwarfs and 
monstrous births. She loved little dogs, singing birds, parrots, and 
apes; and when she was in private, she would, recreate herself with 
various discourses, a game at chess, dancing, or singing. Then she 
would retire into her bedchamber, where she was attended by 
married ladies of the nobility, the Marchioness of Winchester, then a 
widow, the Countess of Warwick, and the Lord Scroop's Lady, 
whose husband was governor of the West Marshes. She would 



410 CHARACTER AND HABITS OF ELIZABETH. 

seldom suffer any one to wait upon her there, except Leicester, 
Hatton, Essex, Nottingham, and Sir Walter Rawleigh, who were 
more intimately conversant with her than any other of the courtiers. 
She frequently mixed serious things with her jests and her mirth ; 
and upon festival-days, and especially in Christmas time, she would 
play at cards and tables, which was one of her usual pastimes; and 
if any time she happened to win, she would be sure to demand the 
money. "When she found herself sleepy, she would take her leave 
of them that were present with much kindness and gravity, and so 
betake her to her rest; some lady of good quality, and of her intimate 
acquaintance, always lying in the same chamber. And besides her 
guards, that were always upon duty, there was a gentleman of good 
quality, and some others, up in the next chamber, who were to wake 
her in case anything extraordinary happened. 

" Though she was endowed with all the goods of nature and 
fortune, and adorned with all those things which are valuable and to 
be desired, yet there were some things in her that were capable of 
amendment, nor was there any mortal, whose virtues were not 
eclipsed by the neighbourhood of some vices or imperfections. She 
was subject to he vehemently transported with anger; and when she 
was so, she would show it by her voice, her countenance, and her 
hands. She would chide her familiar servants so loud, that they that 
stood afar off might sometimes hear her voice. And it was reported, 
that for small offences she would strike her maids of honour with her 
hand: but then her anger was short, and very innocent; and she 
learned from Xenophon's book of the Institution of Cyrus, the 
method of curbing and correcting this unruly and uneasy passion. 
And when her friends acknowledged their offences, she with an 
appeased mind easily forgave them many things. She was also of 
opinion, that severity was safe, and too much clemency was 
destructive; and, therefore, in her punishments and justice, she was 
the more severe. 

Some of the panegyric in this account must be taken with 
allowance ; as, for instance, in what is said of the maiden 
modesty of Elizabeth's ears. It would be far easier than 
pleasant to bring proofs to the contrary from plays and other 
entertainments performed in her presence, and honoured with 
her thanks. Some of the licenses in them would be held 
much too gross for the lowest theatre in our days. Allowance, 
however, is to be made for difference of times ; and consider- 
ing the grave assumptions that must have been practised at 
court in more than one respect, and made most likely a matter 
of conscience towards the community, it may have been none 
of the least exquisite of them, that what was understood to all 
the masculine ears present, was unintelligible to those of 
" Diana," even though she had a goddess's knowledge as well 
as beauty. 

Of one thing, it surprises us that there could ever have 



JAMES I. 411 

been a question ; namely, that Elizabeth was a great as well 
as fortunate sovereign, — a woman of extraordinary intellect. 
To the undervaluing remark that she had wise Ministers, it 
was well answered that she chose them; and if, like most 
other people, she was less wise and less correct in her conduct 
than she had the reputation of being, nothing, on that very 
account, can surely be thought too highly of the wonderful 
address with which she succeeded in sitting upon the top of 
the Protestant world as she did throughout her whole reign, 
supreme over her favourites as well as her Ministers — the 
refuge of struggling opinion, and the idol of romance. 

Enter James I., on horseback, fresh from hunting, clad all 
in grass green, with a green feather, shambling limbs, thick 
features, a spare beard, and a tongue too big for his mouth. 
He looks about him at the by-standers, half frightened ; yet 
he has ridden boldly, and been " in at the death." 

The sensations of James the First on getting snugly nestled 
in the luxurious magnificence of Whitehall must, if possible, 
have been still more prodigious than those of Elizabeth in her 
triumphant safety. Coming from a land comparatively desti- 
tute, and a people whose contentiousness at that time was 
equal to their valour, and suddenly becoming rich, easy, and 
possessor of the homage of Elizabeth's sages and cavaliers, the 
lavish and timid dogmatist must have felt himself in heaven. 
There are points about the character of this prince, which it is 
not pleasant to canvass ; but we think the whole of it (like 
that of other men, if their history were equally known,) 
traceable to the circumstances of his birth and breeding. He 
was the son of the accomplished and voluptuous Mary, and 
the silly and debauched Darnley; his mother, during her 
pregnancy, saw Eizzio assassinated before her face ; Buchanan 
was his tutor, and made him a pedant, " which was all," he 
said, " that he could make of him; " he was a king while yet 
a child; — and from all these circumstances it is not to be 
wondered at that he was at once clever and foolish — confident, 
and, in some respects, of no courage — the son of handsome 
people, and yet disjointedly put together — and that he con- 
tinued to be a child as long as he existed. 

Granger, a shrewd man up to a certain pitch, makes a 
shallow remark upon what Sir Kenelm Digby has said on one 
of these points in James's history. " Sir Kenelm Digby," 
says he, " imputes the strong aversion James had to a drawn 
sword, to the fright his mother was in, during her pregnancy, 



412 COURT OF JAMES I. 

at the sight of the sword with which David Rizzio, her 
secretary, was assassinated in her presence. ' Hence it came,' 
says this author, ' that her son, King James, had such an 
aversion, all his life-time, to a naked sword, that he could not 
see one without a great emotion of the spirits, although other- 
wise courageous enough; yet he could not over-master his 
passion in this particular. I remember, when he dubbed me 
knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword 
upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but 
turned his face another way ; insomuch, that, in lieu of 
touching my shoulder, he had almost thrust the point into 
my eyes, had not the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand 
aright.' * I shall only add," continues Granger, " to what 
Sir Kenelm has observed, that James discovered so many 
marks of pusillanimity, when the sword was at a distance 
from him, that it is needless in this case to allege that an im- 
pression was made upon his tender frame before he saw the 
light." * And then he makes another objection, which, 
though not so obviously unfounded, is perhaps equally so ; for 
effects must have causes of some sort ; and among the mysteries 
of our birth and being, what is more probable, than that the 
same wonders by which we exist at all, should cause the pecu- 
liarities of our existence ? The same " tender frame " would 
produce the general pusillanimity, as well as the particular. 

Before we continue our remarks on the court of James the 
First, we must look back a moment at that of Elizabeth, to 
say, that Tallis, Bird, and others, gave dignity to the service 
of Elizabeth's chapel at Whitehall, by their noble psalmody 
and organ-playing. Her Majesty, one day, not in quite so 
appropriate a strain, looked out of her closet in the chapel, 
and lectured a preacher out loud, for talking indiscreetly of 
people's age and dress in a sermon ! 

The Court of James the First was a great falling off from 
that of Elizabeth, in point of decency. It was Sir Toby keeping 
house after the death of Olivia; or a fox-hunting squire suc- 
ceeding to the estate of some courtly dame, and mingling 
low life with high. The open habit of drinking to intoxica- 
tion, so long the disgrace of England, seems first to have come 
up in this reign ; yet James, who indulged in it, was remark- 
able for his edicts against drunkenness. Perhaps he issued 
them during his fits of penitence ; or out of a piece of his 
boasted " kingcraft," as a blind to his subjects ; or, at best, as 

* Biographical History of England. Vol. ii., p. 7. Fifth Edition. 



REVELS AT THE COURT OF JAMES I. 413 

intimations to them, that the vulgar were not to take liberties 
like the gods. James's court was as great in inconsistency as 
himself. His father's grossness, his mother's refinement, and 
the faults common to both, were equally to be seen in it — 
drunkenness and poetry, dirt and splendour, impiety with claims 
to religion, favouritism without principle, the coarsest and 
most childish buffoonery, and the exquisite fancies of the 
masque. 

When Christian IV. of Denmark, brother of James's queen, 
came into England to visit him, both the kings got drunk 
together. Sir John Harrington the wit, translator of Ariosto 
(the best English version of 'that poet, till Mr. Stewart Rose's 
appeared), has left a letter on the subject of the court revels of 
those days, which makes mention of these royal elegancies, 
and is on every account worth repeating: — 

SIR JOHN HARRINGTON TO MR. SECRETARY BARLOW. 

[From London] 1606. 
" My good Friend, 

" In compliance with your asking, now shall you accept 
my poor accounte of rich doings. I came here a day or two before 
the Danish King came, and from the day he did come till this hour, I 
have been well nigh overwhelmed with carousal and sports of all 
kinds. The sports began each day in such manner and such sorte, as 
well nigh persuaded me of Mahomet's paradise. We had women, and 
indeed wine too, of such plenty, as would have astonished each be- 
holder. Our feasts were magnificent, and the two royal guests did most 
lovingly embrace each other at table. I think the Dane hath 
strangely wrought on our good English nobles ; for those whom I 
could never get to taste good liquor, now follow the fashion, and 
wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon their sobriety, and 
are seen to roll about in intoxication. In good sooth, the parliament 
did kindly to provide his Majestieso seasonably with money, for there 
have been no lack of good livinge, shews, sights, and banquetings 
from morn to eve. 

" One day a great feast was held, and after dinner the representation 
of Solomon, his temple, and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was 
made, or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made before 
their Majesties, by device of the Earl of Salisbury and others. But, 
alas ! as all earthly things do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so 
did prove our presentment thereof. The lady who did play the 
Queen's part did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties; 
but forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets 
into his Danish Majestie's lap, and fell at his feet, though I think it 
was rather in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; cloths 
and napkins were at hand to make all clean. His Majestie then got 
up, and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and 
humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber, 
and laid on a bed of state, which was not a little defiled with the 
presents of the Queen, which had been bestowed on his garments; 



414 HABITS OF JAMES I. 

such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good 
matters. The entertainment and show went foward, and most of the 
presenters went backward or fell down; wine did so occupy their 
upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and 
Charity. Hope did essay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours 
so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the king would excuse her 
brevity. Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not 
joyned to good works, and left the court in a staggering condition. 
Charity came to the King's feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of 
sins her sisters had committed ; in some sorte she made obeyance, 
and brought giftes, but said she would return home again, as there 
was no gift which heaven had not already given his Majesty. She 
then returned to Hope and Faith, who were both sick .... 
in the lower hall. Next came Victory, in bright armour, and pre- 
sented a rich sword to the King, who did not accept it, but put it by 
with his hand; and by a strange medley of versification, did endea- 
vour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not triumph long; 
for, after much lamentable utterance, she was led away like a silly 
captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber. Now 
did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremoste to the King; but I 
grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her 
attendants ; and much contrary to her semblance, made rudely war 
with her olive-branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose 
her coming/'* 

We suspect that some excuse might be found for James's 
tendency to drinking, in the same lax and ricketty constitu- 
tion which made him timid and idle. His love of field sports 
might indeed have given him strength enough to counteract 
it, had he been forced into greater economy of living ; but 
the sportsman is seldom famous for eschewing the pleasures 
of the table; he thinks he has earned, and can afford, excess; 
and so he can, more than most men. James would have died 
of idleness and repletion at half the age he did, had he not 
been a lover of horseback ; but when he got to his table he 
loved it too well ; one excess produced another ; the nerves 
required steadying ; and the poor disjointed, "ill-contrived" 
son of Mary (to use a popular, but truly philosophic epithet,) 
felt himself too stout and valiant by the help of the bottle, not to 
become overfond of it when he saw it return. All his feelings 
were of the same incontinent maudlin kind, easily flowing into 
temptation, and subjecting themselves to a ruler. The bottle 
governed him ; the favourite governed him ; his horse and 
dogs governed him; pedantry governed him; passion governed 
him ; and when the fit was over, repentance governed him as 
absolutely. 

* Nugce Antiques, Ed. 1804, vol i., p. 348, et seq. (Quoted in a note 
to Peyton's " Catastrophe of the Stuarts," in " Secret History of the 
Court of James I." Vol. ii., p. 387.) 



HABITS Of JAMES I. 415 

Sir Anthony Welldon (a discharged servant of James's 
for writing a banter upon Scotland, and therefore of doubtful 
authority concerning him, but credible from collateral evi- 
dence, and in some respects manifestly impartial,) says that 
there was an organised system of buffoonery for the King's 
amusement, at the head of which were Sir Edward Souch, 
singer and relater of indecent stories, Sir John Finet, com- 
poser of ditto, and Sir George Goring, master of the practical 
jokes! Sir George sometimes brought two fools riding on 
people's shoulders, and tilting at one another till they fell 
together by the ears. The same writer says that James was 
not addicted to drinking; but in this he is contradicted by 
every other authority, and indeed a different conclusion may be 
drawn from what Sir Anthony himself subsequently remarks. 
Sully (Henry the Fourth's Sully, who was at one time ambas- 
sador to James, and who tells us that the English monarch 
usually spent part of the afternoon in bed, " sometimes the 
whole of it,") says that his custom was " never to mix water 
with his wine ; " * and Sir Roger Coke says he was — 

" Excessively addicted tc hunting and drinking, not ordinary French 
and Spanish wines, but strong Greek wines; and though he would 
divide his hunting from drinking those wines (that is to say, have set 
times for them, apart), yet he would compound his hunting with 
drinking those wines ; and to that purpose he was attended with a 
special officer, who was, as much as could be, always at hand to fill 
the King's cup in his hunting when he called for it. I have heard my 
father say that, being hunting with the King, after the King had 
drank of the wine, he also drank of it, and though he was young and 
of a healthful constitution, it so disordered his head that it spoiled his 
pleasure, and disordered him for three days after. Whether it was 
Irom drinking these wines, or from some other cause, the King 
became so lazy and unwieldy, that he was thrust on horseback, and 
as he was set, so he would ride, without otherwise poising himself on 
his saddle; nay, when his hat was set on his head, he would not take 
the pains to alter it, but it sat as it was upon him." f 

Perhaps Sir Anthony was fond of the bottle himself, and 
thought the King drank no more than a gentleman should. 
It is curious, that Churchill, in his long and laboured invective 
against James,J does not even allude to this propensity. The 
poet drank himself ; probably wrote the very invective with 
the bottle at his side. However, it is strange, nevertheless, 
he did not turn the habit itself against the Scottish monarch, 
as a virtue which failed to redeem him and make him a good 
fellow. 

* Harris, vol. i., p. 17. f Harris, vol. i., p. 79. 

^ See the Poem of " Gotham 7 in Churchill's works. 



416 HABITS OF JAMES I. 

Sir Anthony Welldon's account of James's person and 
demeanour is so well painted that we must not omit it. It 
carries with it its own proofs of authenticity, and is one 
of those animal likenesses which, in certain people, convey 
the best evidence of the likeness moral : — 

" He was of a middle stature, more corpulent through his clothes 
than in his body, yet fat enough, his clothes being made large and 
easie, the doublets quilted for steletto proofe, his breeches in great 
pleits and full stuffed. He was naturally of a timorous disposition, 
which was the reason of his quilted doublets; his eyes large, ever 
rolling after any stranger that came in his presence, insomuch as 
many for shame have left the roome, as being out of countenance; 
his beard was very thin ; his tongue too large for his mouth, which 
ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very 
uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup of each 
side of his mouth; his skin was as soft as taffeta sarsnet, which felt 
so because he never washt his hands, onely rubb'd his fingers' ends 
slightly with the wet end of a napkin; his legs were very weake, 
having had (as was thought) some foul play in his youth, or rather 
before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years 
of age, that weaknesse made him ever leaning on other men's 
shoulders. His walke was ever circular, his fingers ever in that 
walke fiddling about." — "In his dyet, apparell, and journeys, he was 
very constant; in his apparell so constant, as by his good-wili he 
would never change his clothes, until worn out to ragges; his fashion 
never — insomuch, as one bringing to him a hat of a Spanish block, 
he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions, 
Another time, bringing him roses on his]shooes, he asked, If they would 
make him a ruffe-footed dove? One yard of sixpenny ribbon served 
that turn. His diet and journeys were so constant, that the best 
observing courtier of our time was wont to say, were he asleep seven 
yeares, and then awakened, he would tell where the King every day 
had been, and every dish he had had at his table."* 

Sir Anthony tells us, that James could be as pleasant in 
speech, and " witty," as any man, though with a grave face ; 
and that he never forsook a favourite, not even Somerset, till 
the " poisoning " stories about the latter forced him. It may 
be added, that he did not even then forsake Somerset, as far as 
he could abide by him ; for he gave a pardon to him and his 
wife for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, though he 
hanged their agents. This is the greatest blot on James's 
character; for though it was a very mean thing in him to 
put Ealeigh to death, we really believe Kaleigh "frightened" 
him ; and as to his discountenance of the " mourning " for 
Queen Elizabeth, it appears to us, that, instead of telling 
against him, and being a thing " ungrateful," it was the least 
evidence he could give of something like a feeling for his own 
* Secret History, &c, as above, voL ii., p. 1. 



James i. akd fiis favourites. 41 7 

toother whom Elizabeth had put to death. James owed no 
" gratitude " to Elizabeth. She would manifestly have hindered 
him from succeeding her, could she in common policy, or 
regal feeling, have helped it; and she kept him, or tried 
to keep him, in doubt of his succession to the last. 

James's style of evincing his regard for his favourites was 
of a maudlin and doating description, not necessary to be 
dwelt upon ; and it was traceable perhaps to the same causes 
as his other morbid imperfections ; but the horrible injustice 
which he would allow these favourites to perpetrate, and his 
open violation of his own solemn oaths and imprecations of 
himself to the contrary, deepen the suffocating shadow which 
is thrown over this part of the history of Whitehall by the 
perfumes of effeminacy and the poisons of murderous inconti- 
nence. James's lavish bestowal of other people's money upon 
his favourites (for it was all money of the State which he 
gave away, not his own; though, indeed, he might have 
bestowed it in a less generous style upon himself) was the 
fault of those who let him give it. There was something 
hearty and open in the character of Buckingham, though he 
was a "man of violence" after his fashion, and made White- 
hall the scene of his " abductions." But the sternest and most 
formidable testimony we know against the spirit of this 
prince's favouritism, and the horrors with which it became 
mixed up, probably against his will, but still with a con- 
nivance most weak and guilty, is in the verses entitled the 
" Five Senses," the production of his countryman, admirer, 
and panegyrist, and one of the most loyal of men to his 
house — Drummond of Hawthornden, who had formerly 
written a beautiful eulogium upon him, in a poem which 
Ben Jonson wished had been his own, the " Eiver of 
Forth Feasting." It is clear by these verses that Drummond 
believed in the worst stories related of Somerset and the 
Court. The history of that unhappy favourite is well 
known. The Countess of Essex, the young and beautiful 
wife of the subsequent parliamentary general, fell in love with 
him, and got divorced from her husband under circumstances 
of the most revolting indelicacy. Sir Thomas Overbury, an 
agent of Somerset's, and one of those natures that puzzle us 
by the extreme inconsistency of a fine and tender genius, 
combined with a violent worldliness (with such at least is 
he charged), was to be got rid of for stopping short in his 
furtherance of their connection after the divorce. He was 



418 ANNE OF DENMARK. 

poisoned, and Somerset and his new wife were tried for the 
murder. Somerset denied it, but was found guilty; the 
Countess confessed it; yet both were pardoned, while other 
agents of theirs were hung. There is no rescuing James, 
after this, from the imputation of the last degree of criminal 
weakness, to say the least of it. It is said that the other 
guilty parties (the victims, most likely, of a bad bringing-up,) 
grew at last as hateful to one another, as they had been the 
reverse — the dreadfulest punishment of affections destitute of 
all real regard, and furthered by hateful means. 

We gladly escape from these subjects into the poetical 
atmosphere of the Masque, the only glory of King James's 
reign, and the greatest glory of Whitehall. 

But the Masque, in which James's Queen was a performer, 
reminds us that we must first say a word or two of herself 
and the other princely inmates of Whitehall during this reign. 
The Queen, Anne of Denmark, has been represented by some 
as a woman given to love intrigues, and by others to intrigues 
political. We take her to have been a common-place woman, 
given as much perhaps to both as her position and the 
surrounding example induced ; — the good-natured wife (after 
her fashion) of a good-natured husband, sympathising with 
him in his pleasures of the table, and dying of a dropsy. 
She danced and performed in the Masques at court, not, 
we should guess, with any exquisite grace. Her daughter 
Elizabeth, who married the Elector Palatine, afterwards 
struggling King of Bohemia, and who has found an agreeable 
biographer and panegyrist in the late Miss Benger, appears to 
have partaken of her good nature, with more levity, and was 
very popular with the gentry for her affable manners and her 
misfortunes. When she accompanied the Elector to the altar, 
in the chapel at Whitehall, she could not help laughing out 
loud, at something which struck her fancy. Her brother 
Henry, Prince of Wales, who died in the flower of his youth, 
and who, like all princes who die early, has been extolled as 
a person of wonderful promise, obtained admiration in his 
day for frequenting the tilt-yard while his father was lying in 
bed, and for announcing himself as the opponent of his anti- 
warlike disposition. There was probably quite as much of 
the opposition of heirs apparent in this, as anything more 
substantial; for Henry seems to have exhited his father's 
levity and inconsistency of character. He was thought to be 
no adorer of the fair sex, yet has the credit of an intrigue 



M$ jonson and inkjo jones. 



419 



With the Countess of Essex; and though he reprobated his 
father's swearing, made no scruple of taunting his brother 
Charles for his priestly education, and " quizzing " him for 
not being straight in the legs. As to poor Charles (" Baby 
Charles," as his father called him, for he was a fond parent, 
though not a wise one), he became at once the ornament of 
his family, and the most unfortunate of its members ; but he 
seems from an early age to have partaken of the weakness 
of character, and the consequent mixture of easiness and 
obstinacy, common to the family. Buckingham lorded it 
over him like a petulant elder brother. He once rebuked 
him publicly, in language unbefitting a gentleman; and at 
another time, threatened to give him a knock on the head. 

We have seen court mummeries in the time of Henry the 
Eighth, and pageants in that of Elizabeth. In the time of 
James, the masquings of the one, and the gorgeous shows of 
the other, combined to produce the Masque, in its latest and 
best acceptation ; that is, a dramatic exhibition of some brief 
fable or allegory, uniting the most fanciful poetry and scenery, 
and generally heightened with a contrast of humour, or an 
anti-masque. Ben Jonson was their great poetical master in 
the court of James ; and Inigo Jones claimed to be their no 
less masterly and important setter-forth in scene and show. 




BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL. 



The poet and artist had a quarrel upon this issue, and Tnigo's 
memory suffers from divers biting libels in the works of his 
adversary. The noble Banqueting-house remains to show 
that the architect might have had some right to dispute pre- 

£ E 2 



4£0 COUBT OF CHARLES t, 

tensions, even with the author of the " Alchemist " and the 
" Sad Shepherd ; " for it is a piece of the very music of his 
art (if we may so speak) — the harmony of proportion. 
Within these walls, as we now see them, rose, " like a steam 
of rich distilled perfumes," the elegant lines of Ben Jonson, 
breathing court flowers, — the clouds and painted columns of 
Jones — and the fair faces, gorgeous dresses, and dances, of 
the beauties that dazzled the young eyesight of the Miltons 
and Wallers. Ben's burly body would then break out, as it 
were, after his more refined soul, in some burlesque anti- 
masque, now and then not a little coarse ; and the sovereign 
and the poet most probably concluded the night in the same 
manner, though not at the same table, in filling their skins 
full of wine. 

The Court of Charles I. was decorum and virtue itself in 
comparison with that of James. Drunkenness disappeared; 
there were no scandalous favourites ; Buckingham alone 
retained his ascendency as the friend and assistant ; and the 
King manifested his notions of the royal dignity by a stately 
reserve. Little remained externally of the old Court but its 
splendour; and to this a new lustre was given by a taste for 
painting, and the patronage of Eubens and Vandyke. Charles 
was a great collector of pictures. He was still fonder of 
poetry than his father, retained Ben Jonson as his laureate, 
encouraged Sandys, and May, and Carew, and was a fond 
reader of Spenser and Shakspeare; the last of whom is styled 
by Milton (not in reproach, as Warton strangely supposed ; 
for how could a poet reproach a King with loving a poet ?) 
the " closet companion " of the royal " solitudes." Walpole, 
as Mr. Jesse observes, was of opinion, that — 

" The celebrated festivals of Louis XIV. were copied from the 
shows exhibited at Whitehall, in its time the most polite court in 
Europe." Bassompierre, in mentioning his state introduction to 
Charles and Henrietta, says, " I found the King on a stage raised 
two steps, the Queen and he on two chairs, who rose on the first bow 
I made them on coming in. The company was magnificent, and the 
order exquisite." " I never knew a duller Christmas than we have 
had this year," writes Mr. Gerrard to the Earl ot Strafford : " but 
one play all the time at Whitehall, and no dancing at all. The 
Queen had some little infirmity, the bile or some such thing, which 
made her keep in; only on Twelfth Night she feasted the King at 
Somerset House, and presented him with a play newly studied, the 
Faithful Shepherdess (Fletcher's) which the King's players acted in 
the robes she and her ladies acted their pastoral in last year. I had 
almost forgot to tell your Lordship, that the dicing night, the King 
carried away in James Palmer's hat 1,850/. The Queen was his help, 



COURT OF CHARLES I. 421 

and brought him that luck; she shared presently 900/. There are 
two masques in hand; first, the Inns ot Court, which is to be pre- 
sented on Candlemas-day; the other, the King presents the Queen 
with on Shrove Tuesday, at night: high expenses; they speak of 
20,000/. that it will cost the men of the law." * 

" Charles was not only well informed," says Mr. Jesse, " in all 
matters of court etiquette, and in the particular duties of each indivi- 
dual of his household, but enjoined their performance with remark- 
able strictness. Ferdinand Masham, one oi the esquires of his body, 
has recorded a curious anecdote relative to the King's nice exaction 
of such observances. ' I remember,' he says, ' that coming to the 
King's bedchamber door, which was bolted in the inside, the Earl of 
Bristol, then being in waiting and lying there, he unbolted the door 
upon my knocking, and asked me " What news ? " I told him I 
had a letter lor the King. The earl then demanded the letter of me, 
which I told him I could deliver to none but to the King himself; 
upon which the King said, " The esquire is in the right: for he ought 
not to deliver any letter or message to any but myself, he being at this 
time the chief officer of my house; and if he had delivered the letter 
to any other, I should not have thought him fit for his place." ' It 
seems, that after a certain hour, when the guard was set, and the 
' all right ' served up, the royal household was considered under 
the sole command of the esquire in waiting. ' The King,' says 
Lord Clarendon, ' kept state to the full, which made his court very 
orderly, no man presuming to be seen where he had no pretence to 
be.'"t 

The truth is, that both from greater virtue and a less 
jovial temperament, Charles carried his improvement upon 
the levity of his father's court too far. Public opinion had 
long been quitting the old track of an undiscerning submis- 
sion; and, though it was the King's interest to avoid scandal, 
it was not so to provoke dislike. It was on the side of 
manner in which he failed. His reformations, the more scanda- 
lous ones excepted, appear to have been rather external than 
otherwise. Mrs. Hutchinson, while she speaks of them highly, 
intimates that there was still a good deal of private licence ; 
and though it is asserted that Charles discountenanced swear- 
ing, perhaps even this was only by comparison. It is 
reported of Charles II., that in answer to a remonstrance 
made to him on the oaths in which he indulged, he exclaimed 
in a very irreverent and unfilial manner, " Oaths ! why, your 
Martyr was a greater swearer than I am." It has been ques- 
tioned also, whether in other respects Charles's private con- 
duct was so " immaculate," to use Mr. Jesse's phrase, as the 
solemnity of his latter years and his fate has led most people 

* Jesse's Memoirs of the Court of England during the Eeign of 
the Stuarts, vol. ii., p. 91, 
f Ibid., p. 94. 



422 CHARACTER OF CHARLES I. 

to conclude. Indeed, it is a little surprising how anybody, 
partisans excepted, could Have supposed, that a prince, 
brought up as he was, and the friend of Buckingham, 
should be entirely free from the licence of the time. His 
manners and speeches to women, though not gross for that 
age, would be thought coarse now; and, at all events, were 
proofs of a habit of thinking quite in unison with custom. 
But the present age has been far stricter in its judgment on 
these points than any which preceded it — at least up to the 
time of George III. It was not the question of his gallantries, 
or of his freedom with them, that had anything to do with 
Charles's unpopularity. The people will pardon a hundred 
gallantries sooner than one want of sympathy. Charles I. 
would not have been unpopular in the midst of court elegan- 
cies, if he had not been stiff and repulsive in his manners. 
Unfortunately he wanted address; he had a hesitation in his 
speech ; and his consciousness of a delicate organization and 
of infirmity of purpose, with the addition of a good deal of 
the will common to most people, and particularly encouraged 
in princes, made him afraid of being thought weak and easy. 
He therefore, in what he thought self-defence, took to an 
offensive coldness and dryness of behaviour, and gradually 
became not unwilling even to wreak upon other people the 
irritability occasioned by it to himself. He got into unseemly 
passions with ambassadors, and neither knew how to refuse a 
petition gracefully, nor to repel an undue assumption with 
real superiority. Even his troubles did not teach him 
wisdom in these respects till the very last. He was riding 
out one day during the wars, when a "Dr. Wykes, dean of 
Burian in Cornwall," says Mr. Jesse, " an inveterate punster, 
happened to be near him, extremely well mounted. ' Doctor,' 
said the King, ' you have a pretty nag under you ; I pray, 
how old is he?' Wykes, unable to repress, even in the 
presence of majesty, the indifferent conceit which presented 
itself, 'If it please your Majesty' he said, 'he is in the 
second year of his reign ' (rein). Charles discovered some 
displeasure at this unlicensed ribaldry. ' Go,' he replied, 
' you are a fool ! ' " Now that the dean was a fool there can 
be no doubt ; but that this blunt, offensive, and never-to-be- 
forgotten word was the only one which a king in a state of 
war with his subjects could find, in order to discountenance 
his folly, shows a lamentable habit of subjecting the greater 
consideration to the less. 



QUEEN HENRIETTA. 423 

Unluckily for Charles's dignity in the eyes of his attend- 
ants, and for his ultimate welfare with the people, there was 
a contest of irritability too often going forward between him 
and his consort Henrietta; in which the latter, by dint 
perhaps of being really the weaker of the two, generally con- 
trived to remain conqueror. Swift has recorded an extraor- 
dinary instance of her violence in his list of Mean and Great 
Fortunes. He says, that one day Charles made a present to 
his wife of a handsome brooch, and gallantly endeavouring 
to fix it in her bosom, happened unfortunately to wound the 
skin, upon which her Majesty, in a fit of passion, and in the 
presence of the whole court, took the brooch out and dashed 
and trampled it on the floor. The trouble that Charles had 
to get rid of Henrietta's noisy and meddling French attend- 
ants, not long after his marriage, is well known; but not 
so, that, having contrived to turn the key upon her in 
order that she might not behold their departure, " she fell 
into a rage beyond all bounds, tore the hair from her head, 
and cut her hands severely by dashing them through the glass 
windows." * 

When not offended, however, the Queen's manners were 
lively and agreeable. We are to imagine the time of the 
court divided between her Majesty's coquetries, and accom- 
plishments, and Catholic confessors, and the King's books, 
and huntings, and political anxieties; Buckingham, as long 
as he lived, being the foremost figure next to himself ; and 
Laud and Strafford domineering after Buckingham. In the 
morning the ladies embroidered and read huge romances, or 
practised their music and dancing (the latter sometimes with 
great noise in the Queen's apartments), or they went forth to 
steal a visit to a fortune-teller, or to see a picture by Rubens, 
or to sit for a portrait to Vandyke, who married one of theni. 
In the evening there was a masque, or a ball, or a concert, or 
gaming; the Sucklings, the Wallers, and Carews repeated 
their soft things, or their verses ; and " Sacharissa " (Lady 
Dorothy Sydney) doubted Mr. Waller's love, and glanced 
towards sincere-looking Henry Spencer ; Lady Carlisle flirted 
with the Eiches and Herberts ; Lady Morton looked grave ; 
the Queen threw round the circle bright glances and French 
mots; and the King criticised a picture with Vandyke or 
Lord Pembroke, or a poem with Mr. Sandys (who, besides 
being a poet, was gentleman of his Majesty's chamber) ; or 
* Jesse, vol. ii., p. 79, 



424 COURT OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 

perhaps he took Hamilton or Strafford into a corner, and 
talked, not so wisely, against the House of Commons. It was, 
upon the whole, a grave and a graceful court, not without an 
under-current of intrigue. 

It seems ridiculous to talk of the court of Oliver Cromwell, 
who had so many severe matters to attend to in order to keep 
himself on his throne ; but he had a court, nevertheless ; 
and, however jealously it was watched by the most influential 
of his adherents, it grew more courtly as his protectorate 
advanced ; and it must always have been attended with a 
respect which Charles knew not sufficiently how to insure, 
and James not at all. Its dinners were not very luxurious, 
and the dishes appear to have been brought in by the heavy 
gentlemen of his guard. In April, 1654, we read of the 
"grey coats" of these gentlemen, with " black velvet collars, 
and silver lace and trimmings" — a very sober effort at ele- 
gance. Here his daughters would pay him visits of a morn- 
ing, fluttering betwixt pride and anxiety ; and his mother sit 
with greater feelings of both, starting whenever she heard a 
noise : flocks of officers came to a daily table, at which he 
would cheerfully converse ; and now and then ambassadors 
or the Parliament were feasted ; and in the evening, perhaps 
after a portion of a sermon from his Highness, there would 
be the consciousness of a princely presence, and something 
like a courtly joy. In the circle Waller himself was to be 
found (making good the doubts of " Sacharissa"), and Lord 
Broghill, the friend of Suckling, who refused to join him ; 
and Lady Carlisle, growing old, but still setting her beauty- 
spots at the saints ; and Eichard Cromwell, heir-apparent, 
whom Dick Ingoldsby is forcing to die with laughter, though 
severe Fleetwood is looking that way ; and the future author 
of Paradise Lost talking Italian with the envoys from the 
Apennines ; and Marvel, his brother secretary, chuckling to 
hear from the Swedish ambassador the proposal of a visit 
from Queen Christina ; and young Dryden, bashfully venturing 
in under the wing of his uncle Sir Gilbert Pickering, the 
chamberlain. There was sometimes even a concert ; Crom- 
well's love of music prevailing against the un-angelical 
denouncements of it from the pulpit. The Protector would 
also talk of his morning's princely diversion of hunting ; or 
converse with his daughters and the foreign ambassadors, 
some of which latter had that day paid their respects to the 
former, as to royal personages, on their arrival in England j 



COURT OF CHARLES II. 425 

or if the evening were that of a christening or a marriage, or 
other festive solemnity, his Highness, not choosing to forget 
the rough pleasures of his youth, and combining, perhaps, 
with the recollection something of an hysterical sense of his 
present wondrous condition, would think it not unbecoming 
his dignity to recall the days of King James, and bedaub the 
ladies with sweetmeats, or pelt the heads of his brother 
generals with the chair cushions. Nevertheless, he could 
resume his state with an air that inspired the pencil of Peter 
Lely beyond its fopperies ; and Mazarin at Paris trembled in 
his chair to think of it. 

But how shall we speak of the court of Charles II. ? of 
that unblushing seminary for the misdirection of young 
ladies, which, occupying the ground now inhabited by all 
which is proper, rendered the mass of buildings by the 
water's side, from Charing Cross to the Parliament, one 
vast — what are we to call it ? — 

" Chi mi dara le voci e le parole 
Convenienti a si nobil soggetto ? " 

Let Mr. Pepys explain. Let Clarendon explain. Let all the 
world explain, who equally reprobate the place and its master, 
and yet somehow are so willing to hear it reprobated, that 
they read endless accounts of it, old and new, from the not 
very bashful expose of the Count de Grammont, down to the 
blushing deprecations of Mrs. Jameson. Mr. Jesse himself 
begins with emphatically observing, that " a professed apology 
either for the character or conduct of Charles II. might 
almost be considered as an insult to public rectitude and 
female virtue ; " yet he proceeds to say, that there is a charm 
nevertheless in " all that concerns the ' merry monarch,' 
which has served to rescue him from entire reprobation;" 
and accordingly he proceeds to devote to him the largest 
portion given to any of his princes, not omitting particulars 
of all his natural children ; and winding up with separate 
memoirs of the maids of honour, the mistresses, and those 
confidential gentlemen — Messrs. Chifnnch, Prodgers, and 
Brouncker. 

Upon the reason of this apparent contradiction between 
the morals and toleration of the reading world, we have 
touched before ; and we think it will not be expected of 
us to enter further into its metaphysics. The court is before 
us, and we must paint it, whatever we may think of the 
matter. We shall only observe in the outset, that the 



426 CHARACTER OF CHARLES II. 

" merry monarch," besides not being handsome, had the most 
serious face, perhaps, of any man in his dominions. It was 
as full of hard lines as it was swarthy. If the assembled 
world could have called out to have a specimen of a " man of 
pleasure" brought before it, and Charles could have been 
presented, we know not which would have been greater, the 
laughter or the groans. However, "merry monarch" he is 
called ; and merry doubtless he was, as far as his numerous 
cares and headaches would let him be. Nor should it be 
forgotten that cares, necessities, and bad example, conspired, 
from early youth, to make him the man he was. We know 
not which did him the more harm — the jovial despair of his 
fellow exiles, or the sour and repulsive reputation which 
morals and good conduct had acquired from the gloominess of 
the Puritans. 

Charles was of good height as well as figure, and not 
ungraceful. Andrew Marvel has at once painted and inti- 
mated an excuse for him, in an exordium touching upon the 
associates of his banishment. His allusion to the filial occu- 
pation of Saul is very witty : — 

" Of a tall stature and a sable hue, 
Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew ; 
Ten years of need he suffer'd in exile, 
And kept his father's asses all the while." 

He was a rapid and a constant walker, to settle his nerves ; 
talked affably with his subjects ; had a parcel of little dogs 
about him, which did not improve the apartments at White- 
hall ; hated business ; delighted to saunter from one person's 
rooms at court to another's, in order to pass the time ; was 
fond of wit, and not without it himself; drank and gamed, 
and was in constant want of money for his mistresses, which 
ultimately rendered him a scandalous pensioner upon the 
King of France ; in short, was a selfish man, partly by tem- 
perament, and partly from his early experience of others ; but 
was not ill-natured ; and, like his grandfather James, would 
live and let live, provided his pleasures were untouched. His 
swarthiness he got from the Italian stock of the Medici, and 
his animal spirits from Italy or France, or both : they were 
certainly not inherited from his father. 

The man thus constituted was suddenly transferred from 
an exile full of straits and mortifications into the rich and 
glorious throne of England. The people, sick of gloom and 
disappointment, were as mad to receive him as he was to 
come. It was May, and all England dressed itself in garlands 



CHAKLES H. AND HIS QUEEN. 427 

and finery. Crowds shouted at him ; music floated around 
his steps ; young females strewed flowers at his feet ; gold 
was poured into his pockets ; and clergymen blessed him. 
He receives the homage of Church and State ; and goes the 
same night to sup with Mrs. Barbara Palmer, at a house in 
Lambeth. 

Such was the event which, by an epithet that has since 
acquired a twofold significancy, has been called the " blessed 
Restoration." Orthodoxy and loyalty had obtained an awk- 
ward champion. 

Mrs. Palmer soon restored the King to Whitehall by coming 
there herself, where she became in due time Countess of 
Castlemain, Duchess of Cleveland, and mother of three dukes 
and as many daughters. This was for the benefit of the 
peerage. But Charles, for the benefit of royalty, was unfor- 
tunately compelled to have a wife ; though, as an alleviation 
of the misfortune, his wife, he reflected, would have an esta- 
blishment, with ladies of the bedchamber ; nay, with a pleasing 
addition of maids of honour. He therefore put what face he 
could on the matter, and wedded Catharine of Braganza. 
When Lady Castlemain was presented to her as one of the 
ladies, the poor Queen burst out a-bleeding at the nose. It 
took a good while to reconcile the royal lady to the " other 
lady" (Clarendon's constant term for her), but it was done in 
time, to the astonishment of most, and disgust of some. 
Clarendon was one of the instruments that effected the good 
work. From thenceforth the Queen was contented to get 
what amusement she could, and was as merry as the rest. 
She was not an ill-looking woman; was as fond of dancing as 
her husband ; and he used good-naturedly to try to make her 
talk improper broken English, and would not let her be 
persecuted. 

Whitehall now adjusted itself to the system which pre- 
vailed through this reign, and which may be described as 
follows : we do not paint it at one point of time only, but 
through the whole period. 

Charles walked a good deal in the morning, perhaps 
played at ball or tennis, chatted with those he met, fed his 
dogs and his ducks, looked in at the cockpit, sometimes did 
a little business, then sauntered in-doors about Whitehall ; 
chatted in Miss Wells' room, in Miss Price's room, in 
Miss Stuart's room, or Miss Hamilton's ; chatted in Mr. 
Chiifinch's room, or with Mr. Prodgers ; then dined, and took 



428 CHARLES II. AND HIS COURT. 

enough of wine ; had a ball or a concert, where he devoted 
himself to Lady Castlemain, the Duchess of Portsmouth, or 
whoever the reigning lady was, the Queen talking all the 
while as fast as she could to some other lady ; then, perhaps, 
played at riddles, or joked with Buckingham and Killigrew, 
or talked of the intrigues of the court — the great topic of the 
day. Sometimes the ladies rode out with him in the morning, 
perhaps in men's hats and feathers ; sometimes they went to 
the play, where the favourite was jealous of the actresses ; 
sometimes an actress is introduced at court and becomes a 
" madam" herself — Madam Davis, or Madam Eleanor Gwyn. 
Sometimes the Queen treats them with a cup of the precious 
and unpurchasable beverage called tea, or even ventures 
abroad with them in a frolicsome disguise. Sometimes the 
courtiers are at Hampton, playing at hide-and-seek in a 
labyrinth ; sometimes at Windsor, the ladies sitting half- 
dressed for Sir Peter Lely's voluptuous portraits. 

Lady Castlemain, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Nell 
Gwyn, all have their respective lodgings in Whitehall, looking 
out upon gardens, elegant with balconies and trellises. By 
degrees the little dukes grow bigger, and there is in particular 
a great romping boy, very handsome, called Master Crofts, 
afterwards Duke of Monmouth, who is the protege of Lady 
Castlemain, though his mother was Mrs. Walters, and who 
takes the most unimaginable liberties in all quarters. He 
annoys exceedingly the solemn Duke of York, the King's 
brother, who heavily imitates the reigning gallantries, stupidly 
following some lady about without uttering a word, and who 
afterwards cut off the said young gentleman's head. The 
concerts are French, partly got up by St. Evremond and the 
Duchess of Mazarin, who come to hear them ; and there, in 
addition to the ladies before mentioned, come also the Duchess 
of Buckingham, short and thick, (daughter of the old Parlia- 
mentary general, Fairfax,) and Lady Ossory, charming and 
modest, and the Countess of Shrewsbury, who was neither, 
and Lady Falmouth, with eyes at which Lord Dorset never 
ceased to look, and the Duchess of York (Clarendon's daugh- 
ter), eating something, and divine old Lady Fanshawe, who 
crept out of the cabin in a sea-fight to stand by her husband's 
side. The Queen has brought her there, grateful for a new 
set of sarabands, at which Mr. Waller is expressing hi3 
rapture — Waller, the visitor of three courts, and admired and 
despised in them all. Behind him stands Dryden, with a 



COURT CHRONICLES OF PEPYS. 429 

quiet and somewhat down-looking face, finishing a couplet of 
satire. "Handsome Sydney" is among the ladies; and so is 
Ralph Montague, who loved ugly dogs because nobody else 
would ; and Harry Jermyn, who got before all the gallants, 
because he was in earnest. Rochester, thin and flushed, is 
laughing in a corner at Charles's grim looks of fatigue and 
exhaustion ; Clarendon is vainly flattering himself that he is 
diverting the king's ennui with a long story ; Grammont is 
shrugging his shoulders at not being able to get in a word ; 
and Buckingham is making Sedley and Etherege ready to die 
of laughter by his mimicry of the poor Chancellor. 

The following delicate morceaux from the pages of our 
friend Pepys will illustrate the passages respecting my Lady 
Castlemain and others. 

" 1660— Sept. 14.— To White Hall Chappell, where one Dr. Crofts 
made an indifferent sermon, and after it an anthem, ill sung, which 
made the King laugh. Here I first did see the Princesse Royall since 
she came into England. Here I also observed, how the Duke of York 
(James II.) and Mrs. Palmer (Lady Castlemaine) did talk to one 
another very wantonly through the hangings that part the king's 
closet and the closet where the ladies sit. 

"May 21. — My wife and I to Lord's lodgings, where she and I staid 
talking in White Hall Garden. And in the Privy-garden saw the 
finest smocks and linnen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's, laced 
with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw ; and did me good to 
look at them. Sarah told me how the King dined at my Lady Castle- 
maine's, and supped, every day and night the last week ; and that the 
night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queene's arrival, the 
King was there ; but there was no fire at her door, though at all the 
rest of the doors almost in the street ; which was much observed ; 
and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed 
one another ; and she being with child, was said to be heaviest. But 
she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of doors, 
since the King's going (to meet his wife). 

" August 23d. — Walked to White Hall, and through my Lord's 
lodgings we got into White Hall Garden, and so to the Bowling- 
greene, and up to the top of the new Banqueting House there, over 
the Thames, which was a most pleasant place as any I could have 
got ; and all the show consisted chiefly in the number of boats and 
barges ; and two pageants, one of a king, and the other a queene, 
with her maydes of honour sitting at her feet very prettily ; and they 
tell me the queene is Sir Richard Eord's daughter. Anon come the 
King and Queene in a barge under a canopy with 1,000 barges and 
boats I know, for they could see no water for them, nor discern the 
King nor Queene. And so they landed at White Hall Bridge, and 
the great guns on the other side went off. But that which pleased 
me best was, that my Lady Castlemaine stood over against us upon a 
piece of White Hall. But methought it was strange to see her lord 
and her upon the same place walking up and down without taking 
notice one of another, only at first entry he put off his hat, and she 



430 COURT CHRONICLES OF PEPtS. 

made him a very civil salute, but afterwards took no notice one of 
another; but both of them now and then would take their child, 
which the nurse held in her armes, and dandle it. One thing more ; 
there happened a scaffold below to fall, and we feared much hurt, but 
there was none, but she of all the great ladies only run down among 
the common rabble to see what hurt was done, and did take care of a 
child that received some little hurt, which methought was so noble. 
Anon, there come one there booted and spurred that she talked long 
with, and by and by, she being in her haire, she put on his hat, which 
was but an ordinary one, to keep the wind off. But it become her 
mightily, as everything else do." 

What Pepys thought "noble" was probably nothing more 
than the consequence of a habit of doing what she pleased, in 
spite of appearances. The "hat" is a comment on it, to the 
same effect. 

"December 25th. — Christmas Day. — Had a pleasant walk to 
White Hall, where I intended to have received the communion with 
the family, but I come a little too late. So I walked* up into the 
house and spent my time looking over pictures, particularly the ships 
in King Henry the VHIth's Voyage to Bullonn*, marking the great 
difference between those built then and now. By and by, down to 
the chapel again, where Bishop Morley preached upon the song of 
the angels, ' Glory to God on high, on earth peace, and good- will 
towards men.' Methought he made but a poor sermon, but long, 
and reprehending the common jollity of the court for the true joy that 
shall and ought to be on these days; particularized concerning their 
excess in playes and gaming, saying, that he whose office it is to keep 
the gamesters in order and within bounds, serves but for a second 
rather in a duell, meaning the groome-porter. Upon which it was 
worth observing how far they are come from taking the reprehensions 
of a bishop seriously, that they all laugh in the chapel when he 
reflected on their ill actions and courses. He did much press us 
to joy in these publick days of joy, and to hospitality. But one 
that stood by whispered in my ear that the bishop himself do not 
spend one groate to the poor himself. The sermon done, a good 
anthem followed with violls, and the King come down to receive the 
sacrament. 

"1662-3 — February 1st. — This day Creed and I walking in White 
Hall did see the King coming privately from my Lady Castlemaine's; 
which is a poor thing for a Prince to do: and so I expressed my sense 
of it to Creed in terms which I should not have done, but that 
I believe he is trusty in that point." 

The court of James II. is hardly worth mention. It lasted 
less than four years, and was as dull, as himself. The most 
remarkable circumstance attending it was the sight of friars 
and confessors, and the brief restoration of Popery. Waller, 
too, was once seen there; the fourth court of his visiting. 
There was a poetess also, who appears to have been attached 

* Boulogne. 



S*r. James's pask. 431 

hy regard as well as office to the court of James — Anne 
Kingsmill, better known by her subsequent title of Countess 
of Winchilsea. The attachment was most probably one of 
feeling only and good-nature, for she had no bigotry of any 
sort. Dryden, furthermore, was laureate to King James ; and 
in a fit of politic, perhaps real, regret, turned round upon 
the late court in his famous comparison of it with its pre- 
decessor. 

James fled from England in December, 1688, and the 
history of Whitehall terminates with its conflagration, ten 
years afterwards. 



CHAPTER XII. 

St. James's Park and its associations. — Unhealthiness of the Place 
and neighbourhood. — Leper Hospital of St. James. — Henry the 
Eighth builds St. James's Palace and the Tilt Yard. — Original 
State and Progressive Character of the Park. — Charles the First. — 
Cromwell. — Charles the Second; his Walks, Amusements, and 
Mistresses. — The Mulberry Gardens. — Swift, Prior, Richardson, 
Beau Tibbs, Soldiers, and Syllabubs. — Character of the Park at 
present. — St. James's Palace during the Reigns of the Stuarts and 
two first Georges. — Anecdotes of Lord Craven and Prince George 
of Denmark. — Characters of Queen Anne and of George the First 
and Second. — George the First and his Carp. — Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu and the Sack of Wheat. — Horace Walpole's Portrait of 
George the First. — The Mistresses of that King, and of his Son. — 
Mistake of Lord Chesterfield. — Queen Caroline's Ladies in Waiting. 
— Miss Bellenden and the Guineas. — George the Second's Rupture 
with his Father, and with his Son. — Character of that Son. — Buck- 
ingham House. — Sheffield and his Duchess. — Character of Queen 
Charlotte. — Advantages of Queen Victoria over her predecessors. 

T. JAMES'S PARK is associated in con- 
temporary minds with nothing but amus- 
ing recollections of bands of music 
marching soldiers, maid-servants and 
children, drinkings of "milk from the 
cow," the hoop-petticoats of the court 
days of George the Third, and fading 
images of passages in novels, or of shabby- 
genteel debtors sitting lounging on the 
benches. A little further back in point of time we see a novelist 
himself, Richardson, walking in it, with other invalids, for his 
health j then Swift crossing it from Suffolk Street in his way 




432 UNHEALTHY SITE OF ST. JAMES'S PARK* 

to Chelsea, or thinking of the Spectator and Rosamond's Pond; 
then the gallants of the time of Charles the Second, with 
Charles himself feeding his ducks and playing at mall; then 
his unhappy father led through it from St. James's Palace on 
his way to the scaffold at Whitehall; and then the chival- 
resque sports of the Tudors in the famous tilt-yard, which 
occupied the site of the Horse Guards. To all these points 
we shall return for the purpose of entering into a few par- 
ticulars ; but as geographers begin their accounts of a place 
with the soil, we shall first make a few remarks of a like 
nature. 

The site of this park, which must always have been low 
and wet, is said in the days before the Conquest to have been 
a swamp. Yet so little understood, not only at that time but 
any time till within these few years, were those vitalest arts 
of life which have been disclosed to us by the Southwood 
Smiths and others, that the good citizens of London in those 
days built a hospital upon it for lepers (by way of purifying 
their skins), and people of rank and fashion have been 
clustering about it more and more ever since, especially of late 
years. " If a merry-meeting is to be wished," says the man 
in Shakspeare, " may God prohibit it." If our health is to be 
injured while in town by luxury and late nights, say the men 
of State and Parliament, let us all go and make it worse in 
the bad air of Belgravia. Nay, let us sit with our feet in the 
water, while in Parliament itself, and then let us aggravate 
our agues in Pimlico and the park. — There is no use in 
mincing the matter, even though the property of a great 
lord be doubled by the mistake. The fashionable world 
should have stuck to Marylebone and the good old dry parts 
of the metropolis, or gone up hill to Kensington gravel-pits, or 
into any other wholesome quarter of the town or suburbs, 
rather than have descended to the water-side, and built in 
the mush of Pimlico. Building and house-warming doubtless 
make a difference; and wealth has the usual advantages com- 
pared with poverty: but the malaria is not done away. A 
professional authority on the subject gave the warning five 
and twenty years ago in the Edinburgh Review ; but what are 
warnings to house-building and fashion? " It is not suspected," 
he says (vol. xxxvi. p. 341) " that St. James's Park is a per- 
petual source of malaria, producing frequent intermittents, 
autumnal dysenteries, and various derangements of health, 
in all the inhabitants who are subject to its influence. The 



THE LEPER HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES'S. 433 

cause being unsuspected, the evil is endured, and no further 
inquiries are made." The malaria (he tells us in another 
passage of the same article) " spreads even to Bridge Street 
and Whitehall. Nay, in making use of the most delicate 
miasmometer (if we may coin such a word) that we ever 
possessed, an officer who had suffered at Walcheren, we have 
found it reaching up to St. James's Street even to Bruton 
Street, although the rise of ground is here considerable, 
and the whole space from the nearest water is crowded with 
houses." 

This statement, corroborated as it is by the obvious nature 
of the soil and air in the park, where the people to any eye 
coming from higher ground seem walking about only in a 
thinner kind of water — a perpetual haze and mugginess — 
ought to settle the question respecting the doom of Bucking- 
ham Palace. Her Majesty, whose life and comfort are pre- 
cious to her subjects, should have her town residence in quite 
another sort of place. Almost everything indeed, artificial 
as well as natural, conspires to render the spot unwholesome. 
See what the royal lungs receive on all sides of the present 
abode whichever way the windows are opened. In front of 
it is the steam of the mushy ground and the canal ; on the 
left comes draining down the wet of Constitution Hill; and 
on the right and at the back are the vapours of the river and 
the pestilential smokes of the manufactories. What an air 
in which to set forth the colours of the royal flag and 
refresh the anxieties of the owne'r ! We never look down 
on the flag from Piccadilly, but we long to see it announc- 
ing the royal presence on higher ground and in a healthy 
breeze. 

The Leper Hospital, being the ancientest known domicile 
in the spot before us, stood on the site of the present St. 
James's Palace; so that where state and fashion have con- 
gregated, and blooming beauties come laughing through the 
trees, was once heard the dismal sound of the " cup and 
clapper," which solicited charity for the most revolting of 
diseases. The spot was probably selected for the hospital, 
not only as being at the greatest convenient distance from the 
habitations of the good citizens its founders (lepers being 
always put as far as possible out of the way), but because it 
suggested itself to the imagination as possessed of an analo- 
gous dreariness and squalidity. Unfavourable circumstances 
in those days were only thought fit for one another, not for 

F F 



434 THE LEPEK HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES'S. 

the super-induction of favourable ones. The lunatic was to 
be exasperated by whips and dark-keeping, and the leper 
thrust into the ditch. The world had not yet found out that 
light, cleanliness, and consolation were good for all. Imagine 
this " lake of the dismal swamp," now St. James's Park, with 
not another house nearer to it than the walls at Ludgate, 
presenting to the timid eyes of the Sunday pedestrian its 
lonely spital, which at once attracted his charity and repelled 
his presence (for leprosy was thought infectious), the wind 
sighing through the trees, and the rain mingling with the pes- 
tilential-looking mud. 

The endowment of St. James's Hospital is said to have 
been originally for women only, fourteen in number, to 
■whom were subsequently added eight brethren " to administer 
divine service." They were probably, however, in a good 
condition of life — " leper ladies," as an old poem styles the 
companions of Cressida; but ladies, according to the poem, 
were not exempt from the duty of asking alms with the " cup 
and clapper ; " and as it was probably a part of their business 
and humiliation to -watch for the appearance of wayfarers, 
and accost them with cries and clamour, scenes of that 
kind may have taken place in the walk now constituting the 
Mall. 

The hospital was exchanged with Henry the Eighth for 
u a consideration ; " and upon its site, or near it, that soul of 
leprosy built a manor, and transferred into it his own bloated 
and corrupted body. He was then in the forty-third year of 
his age, and in the same year (1532) he married poor Anne 
Boleyn. The town-residences (as they would now be called) 
of the kings of England had hitherto been at Kensington, 
or on the banks of the Thames at London and Westminster 
(such as the Tower, Westminster Hall, &c.) What it was 
that attracted Henry to the Leper Hospital it is difficult to 
conceive; though the neighbourhood, no doubt, had become 
a little cleansed and refined by the growth of Westminster 
and Whitehall. Much neatness was not required by a state 
of manners, which, according to Erasmus, must have been 
one of the dirtiest in Europe, and which allowed the refuse 
of meats and drinks, in gentlemen's houses, to collect under 
the rushes in the dining-rooms. Perhaps the new palace was 
to be a place of retirement for the King and his thoughtless 
victim, whom four years afterwards he put to death. Most 
likely, how r ever, his great object was to grasp all he could. 



st. james's palace. 435 

and add to the number of his parks and amusements; for 
the whole of the St. James's Fields (as they were called) fell 
into his hands with the house, and he stocked them with 
game, built a tilt-yard in front of Whitehall, on the site of 
the present Horse Guards, together with a cock -pit in its 
neighbourhood ; and on the downfall of Wolsey took posses- 
sion of Whitehall itself, which thenceforth became added to 
the list of royal abodes. The new palace could never have 
been handsome. It had the homely look which it retains to 



ST. james's palace. 1650. 

this day, as the reader will see in the print before him ; the 
gateway looking up St. James's Street being evidently a 
remnant of it. 

The Tilt Yard, as its name implies, was the chief scene of 
knightly amusement in the reigns of the Tudors. Here 
Henry jousted till he grew too fat ; and here Elizabeth sat 
at the receipt of chivalrous adulation. The spot is full of 
life and colour in the eyes of one's imagination, with heralds 
and coats of arms, plumed champions, caparisoned steeds, 
and courts looking on from draperied galleries. The pre- 
sent tranquil exercises on parade may be considered as a 
remnant of the old military shows. But the people had no 
admittance within the court grounds, except on favour. 

The new park seems to have remained strictly enclosed as 
a nursery for game till the period of the civil wars of the 
Commonwealth. A new palace by Inigo Jones was intended 
to overlook it at Whitehall, of which only the Banqueting 
House was erected. Charles the First was brought to this 
house across the Park, from St. James's Palace, in order to 



436 MULBERRY GARDENS. 

suffer death. Cromwell is then discerned in the park grounds 
taking the air in a sedan; but its popular history does not 
cnmmence till the Restoration, when Charles the Second, who 
seems not to have known what to do with the quantity of life 
and animal spirits that had been suppressed during his exile, 
took to improving and enjoying it with great vivacity. The 
walks with him became real walks, for he was a great pedes- 
trian. He had got the habit, perhaps, when he could not 
afford a horse. He let the people in to see him feed his ducks 
in the canal, a branch of which, called Duck Island, he 
pleasantly erected into a " Government " for the French wit 
and refugee, St. Evremond. He made an aviary on the 
south-east side of the park, thence called Birdcage Walk ; 
turned the north side into a mall for the enjoyment of the 
pastimes so called, in which he excelled ; introduced skating 
from Holland on the canal and Rosamond's Pond (which was 
another branch of it on the south-west) ; had mistresses in 
lodgings east and west of him (Cleveland at Whitehall and 
Nell Gwyn in Pall Mall) ; and saw, in the course of his reign, 
new streets rising and old places of entertainment nourishing 
in other quarters of his favourite district; Spring Gardens 
(which became famous for the tavern called " Lockett's"), at 
Charing Cross, and the Mulberry Gardens and noblemen's 
mansions between Pimlico and Piccadilly. It has been a 
question whether the site of the Mulberry Gardens was on 
the spot now occupied by Arlington Street, or on that of the 
Queen's Palace. We suspect it is difficult to say which, and 
that they extended along the whole space between the two. 
Particular sites are too often confounded with places near 
them ; and houses are said to displace one another, which only 
occupied successive neighbourhoods. By some writers, for 
instance, the sites of Arlington and Old Buckingham Houses 
are considered as identical, while others represent them in one 
another's vicinity. At all events, the Mulberry Gardens 
appear to have included the site of both those houses. Ladies 
came there in masks to eat syllabubs, and converse with their 
lovers. Sedley made them the scene of a play. The whole 
park, indeed, in Charles's reign, may be said to have been the 
scene of a play, especially towards evening, when the meetings 
took place which Sedley and Etherege dramatised. In the 
morning all was duck-feeding and dog-playing and playing at 
mall; in the evening all intrigue and assignation. At one 
time Waller is admiring the King's masterly use of the small 



437 

Stick ; at another Pepys is asking questions of the park-keepers, 
or transported at sight of the court ladies on horseback ; at 
another Evelyn is horrified (though he seems to have sought 
occasions for such horrors) at overhearing a " very familiar 
discourse" between his Majesty and that "impudent co- 
median," Nelly Gwyn, who is standing at her garden- wall at 
the back of Pall Mall (near the present Marlborough House). 
Matters in this respect mended, though not suddenly, at 
the Eevolution. Whitehall Palace was then accidentally 
burnt down, and that of St. James's becomes one of the chief 
residences of the sovereign, which it remains till the reign of 
the present. Swift and Prior are now seen walking for their 
health in the park, — Swift to get thin, and Prior to get fat. 
The heroes and hungry debtors of the novelists (for the park 
was privileged from arrest) make their appearance, the former 
with their wives or friends, the latter sitting starving on the 
benches. Staid ladies have Sunday promenades under the 
eye of staid sovereigns. Something of a new license returns 
with the first and second Georges ; but it comes from Ger- 
many, is discreet, and makes little impression. The greatest 
assignation we read of is an innocent one of Richardson with 
a Lady Bradshaigh, who is " mighty curious" to know what 
sort of man he is, and accordingly moves him to describe 
himself in the formal terms of an advertisement, in order 
that he may be recognised when she meets him. Goldsmith's 
Beau Tibbs, who " blasts himself with an air of vivacity" at 
seeing " nobody in town," is now the pleasantest fellow we 
encounter in the park for many a day. The ducks, and the 
dogs, and the birdcages, and Rosamond's Pond, dismal for 
drowning lovers, have long vanished ; and the place begins 
to look as it used to do forty years ago. The gayest enter- 
tainment in it is " the soldiers," with their bands of music ; 
and the most sensual pleasure a glass of milk from the cow. 
A mad woman (Margaret Nicholson) makes a sensation, by 
attempting to stab George the Third at the palace door ; but 
all is quiet again, sedate and orderly, even when court-days 
bring together a crowd of beauties. George the Fourth just 
lives long enough to turn Buckingham Palace into a toy, and 
the site of Carlton Gardens into something better. With his 
successors comes the greatest of all the park improvements — 
the conversion of the poor fields and canal into a public 
pleasure-ground and an ornamental piece of water. Upon 
this King Charles's ducks have returned, equally improved j 



438 . 

and if it did but possess a good atmosphere, St. James's Park 
would now be as complete a place of recreation for the pro- 
menaders of its neighbourhood, as it is handsome and well- 
intended. 

One of the most popular aspects of St. James's Park is that 
of a military and music-playing and milk-drinking spot. The 
milk-drinkings, and the bands of music, and the parades, are 
the same as they used to be in our boyish days ; and, we were 
going to add, may they be immortal. But though it is good 
to make the best of war as long as war cannot be helped, and 
though music and gold lace, &c, are wonderful helps to that 
end, yet conscience will not allow us to blink all we know of 
a very different sort respecting battlefields and days after the 
battle. We say, therefore, may war turn out to be as mortal, 
and speedily so, as railroads and growing good-sense can make 
it ; though in the meantime, and the more for that hope, we 
may be allowed to indulge ourselves as we did when children, 
in admiring the pretty figures which it cuts in this place — the 
harmlessness of its glitter and the transports of its beholders. 
Will anybody who has beheld it when a boy ever forget how 
his heart leaped within him when, having heard the music 
before he saw the musicians, he issued hastily from Whitehall 
on to the parade, and beheld the serene and stately regiment 
assembled before the colonel, the band playing some noble 
march, and the officers stepping forwards to the measure with 
their saluting swords ? Will he ever forget the mystical 
dignity of the band-major, who made signs with his staff ; 
the barbaric, and as it were, Othello-like height and lustre of 
the turbaned black who tossed the cymbals ; the dapper 
juvenility of the drummers and fifers ; and the astounding 
prematureness of the little boy who played on the triangle ? 
Is it in the nature of human self-respect to forget how this 
little boy, dressed in a " right earnest" suit of regimentals, 
and with his hair as veritably powdered and plastered as the 
best, fetched those amazing strides by the side of Othello, 
which absolutely "kept up" with his lofty shanks, and made 
the schoolboy think the higher of his own nature for the pos- 
sibility? Furthermore, will he ever forget how some regi- 
ment of horse used to come over the Park to Whitehall, in the 
midst of this parade, and pass the foot-soldiers with a sound 
of clustering magnificence and dancing trumpets ? Will he 
ever forget how the foot then divided itself into companies, 
and turning about and deploying before the colons), marched 



ST. james's park and its recreations. 439 

off in the opposite direction, carrying away the school-boy 
himself and the crowd of spectators with it ; and so, now with 
the brisk drums and fifes, and now with the deeper glories of 
the band, marched gallantly off for the court-yard of the 
palace, where it again set up its music-book, and enchanted 
the crowd with Haydn or Mozart ? What a strange mixture, 
too, was the crowd itself — boys and grown men, gentlemen, 
vagabonds, maid-servants — there they all went listening, 
idling, gazing on the ensign or the band-major, keeping pace 
with the march, and all of them more or less, particularly the 
maid-servants, doting on the u sogers." We, for one, confess 
to having drunk deep of the attraction, or the infection, or 
the balmy reconcilement (whichever the reader pleases to call 
it). Many a holiday morning have we hastened from our 
cloisters in the city to go and hear " the music in the park," 
delighted to make one in the motley crowd, and attending upon 
the last nourish of the hautboys and clarionets. There we 
first became acquainted with feelings which we afterwards 
put into verse (if the recollection be not thought an imper- 
tinence); and there, without knowing what it was called, or 
who it was that wrote it, we carried back with us to school 
the theme of a glorious composition, which afterwards became 
a favourite with opera-goers under the title of Non piic andrai, 
the delightful march in Figaro. We suppose it is now, and 
has ever since been played there, to the martialisation of 
hundreds of little boys, and the puzzlement of philosophy. 
Everything in respect to military parade takes place, we 
believe, in the park just as it used to do, or with little varia- 
tion. The objects also which you behold, if you look at the 
parade and its edifices, are the same. The Admiralty, the 
Treasury, the back of the Minister's house in Downing Street, 
and the back-front of the solid and not inappropriate building, 
called the Horse Guards, look as they did fifty years ago ; 
and there also continue to stand the slender Egyptian piece of 
cannon, and the dumpy Spanish mortar, trophies of the late 
war with France. The inscriptions, however, on those 
triumphant memorials contain no account of the sums we are 
still paying for having waged it. 

" The soldiers" and the " milk from the cow" do not at all 
clash in the minds of boyhood. The juvenile imagination 
ignores what it pleases, especially as its knowledge is not very 
great. It no more connects the idea of village massacre with 
guns and trumpets, than it supposes the fine scarlet coat 



440 st. 

capable of being ragged and dirty. Virgil may say some* 
thing about ruined fields, and people compelled to fly for their 
lives ; but this is only part of a " lesson," and the calamities 
but so many nouns and yerbs. The maid-servants, and 
indeed the fair sex in general, till they become wives and 
mothers, enjoy the like happy exemption from ugly associa- 
tions of ideas ; and the syllabub is taken under the trees, with 
a delighted eye to the milk on one side, and the military show 
on the other. 

The late Mr. West, the painter, was so pleased with this 
pastoral group of cows and milk-drinkers in the park, that he 
went out of the line of his art to make a picture of it. 

Saint James's Palace was not much occupied by the Tudor 
and Stuart sovereigns. Their principal town residence was 
Whitehall. The first of the Stuarts may have intended to 
make St. James's the residence of the Princes of Wales ; for 
he gave it his son Henry, who died there. We have spoken 
of this prince and his doubtful " promise" already. The best 
thing known of him is the astonishment he expressed at his 
father's keeping " such a bird" as Walter Raleigh locked up 
in a cage. 

Charles the First spent the three last days of his life in this 
palace, occupying himself in devotion, and preparing to fall with 
dignity ; — happy if he had but known how to value the dignity 
of truth, which would have saved him from the necessity. The 
Stuarts, unfortunate everywhere in proportion to the gravity 
of their pretensions, had their customary bad fortune in this 
palace ; at least the male portion of them. James the Second's 
daughters, who got his throne, were born and married there ; 
but here also was born his son, the first Pretender, whose 
mother's chamber being situate near some backstairs gave 
colour to the ridiculous story of his having been a spurious 
child smuggled into the palace in a warming pan ; and here 
his unlucky and narrow-minded father partly resided when he 
per force invited his ouster and son-in-law William to take up 
his abode in it, and received in return notice to quit his 
throne. The old romantic Lord Craven, who was supposed 
to have been privately married to James the First's daughter, 
the luckless Queen of Bohemia, and who was thus destined 
to witness the whole of the troubles of the English dynasty of 
the Stuarts, happened to be on duty at St. James's when the 
Dutch troops were coming across the park to take possession 
of it. Agreeably to his chivalrous character, and to his habit 



ITS ROYAL RESIDENTS. 441 

of taking warlike steps to no purpose, the gallant veteran 
would have opposed their entrance ; but his master forbade 
him ; and he marched away, says Pennant, " with sullen 
dignity." 

" Est-il- possible" got the house after James ; — we mean his 
daughter Anne's husband, George of Denmark, who being no 
livelier a man than his father-in-law, made no other comment 
than these three words (Is it possible?) on the accounts given 
him by the poor King of every successive desertion from his 
cause. In due time the man of one remark followed the 
deserters ; upon which James observed to one of the few 
friends left him, " Who do you think is gone now ? Little 
Est-il-possible himself." 

St. James's was given to Anne and her husband by the new 
sovereign William the Third. She made it her chief palace 
when she came to the throne, and such it continued to be 
with the sovereigns of England till the reign of George the 
Third, with whom its occupation was divided with Bucking- 
ham house. Lady Strafford, the wild daughter of Rochester, 
who lived in France because England, she said, was " too 
dull" for her, used to relate stories of the " orgies" in Anne's 
palace. Palaces for the most part have been places of greater 
license than the world supposes, owing to the natural results 
of luxury, privilege, and the bringing of idle and agreeable 
people together ; but the orgies which the rattle-headed Lady 
Strafford talked of, were probably never anything much 
greater than a drinking-bout of her husband, who unluckily 
taught his wife to drink too. Anne, between her Protestant 
accession and her exiled Popish kindred, her imperious 
favourite the Duchess of Marlborough, and her quarrelling 
and fluctuating Administrations, had an . anxious time of it. 
There is an old French story of a sage but ugly cavalier, 
who married a handsome fool, in the persuasion that his 
children would inherit their mother's beauty and his own 
wisdom. Unfortunately, they turned out to be specimens of 
his own ugliness, combined with the mother's folly. We do 
not say that Queen Anne was a fool, though she was not very 
wise ; but when her grandfather, Lord Clarendon, saw the 
match between his clever daughter and the future James the 
Second, he probably hoped that their offspring would possess 
the father's figure combined with the mother's wit ; whereas 
neither Mary nor Anne possessed the latter, and Anne in- 
herited the mother's fat with the father's dulness. She was a 



442 CHARACTER OP QUEEN ANNE. 

well-meaning and fond, but sluggish-minded woman, with no 
force of character ; her temperament was heavy and lax ; 
she did not know what to do with her political perplexities ; 
and the screw-up of her nerves with strong waters appears to 
have become irresistible. Swift gives a curious account of 
her levees, in which she would sit with a parcel of courtiers 
about her, silently giving glances at them, and putting the 
end of her fan in her mouth for want of address. She was 
glad to get the whole set away, that she might sink into her 
easy chair, and complain of the troubles of human life. 

St. James's thus began with being a dull court, and dull 
for the most part it remained to the last — quite worthy of its 
external appearance. George the First and Second were 
both dull gentlemen, with a difference ; the former a pale 
round -featured man, content to appear the insipid personage 
he was ; the latter, aquiline-nosed, affecting spirit and 
gallantry, and attaining only to rudeness. They were people 
of the then German schools of breeding, very different from 
the present ; and St. James's at that time combined a tasteless 
air of decorum with gallantries equally unengaging. George 
the First had two German mistresses, one as lean as the other 
was fat ; and George the Second another, remarkable for 
nothing but making money. Lady Wortley Montagu and 
Horace Walpole have given some amusing notices of the 
palace in connection with their Majesties and the court. 

" This is a strange country," said George the First on his 
coming to England. " The first morning after my arrival at 
St. James's, I looked out of the window' and saw a park with 
walks, a canal, &c, which they told me were mine. The 
next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a 
fine brace of carp out of my canal ; and I was told I must 
give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's servant for bringing me 
my own carp out of my own canal in my own park." 

We are not to suppose that the King delivered this speech 
in the smart good English of its reporter, or in any English ; 
for he was not acquainted with the language. He and his 
Minister Sir Eobert Walpole used to converse, even on the 
most important matters of state, in such Latin as their school 
recollections furnished, the Minister understanding German 
or French as little as the King did English. 

His Majesty, in the first days of his new court, was more 
agreeably surprised one evening by the sudden return of Lady 
Mary Wortley to the party which were assembled in his 



&EORGE THE FIRST. 443 

rooms, and which she had somewhat strangely pleaded a pre- 
vious engagement for quitting. She returned, borne in the 
arms of Mr. Secretary Craggs, junior, who had met her going 
away, and seized hold of the fugitive. .He deposited her in 
the ante-room ; but the doors of the presence-chamber being 
hastily thrown open by the pages, she found herself so 
astonished and fluttered that she related the whole adventure 
to the no less astonished king ; who asked Mr. Craggs 
whether it was customary in England to carry ladies about 
" like sacks of wheat." " There is nothing," answered the 
adroit secretary, " which I would not do for your Majesty's 
satisfaction." 

Towards the close of this monarch's reign, the future court 
historian, Horace Walpole, then a boy of ten years of age, 
had a longing " to see the King ;" and as he was the son of 
the Minister, his longing was gratified in a very particular 
manner. A meeting was arranged on purpose the day before 
his Majesty took his last journey to Hanover : — 

"My mother," says Walpole, "carried me at ten at night to the 
apartments of the Countess of Walsingham, on the ground floor, 
towards the garden of St. James's, which opened into that of her 
aunt the Duchess of Kendal's ; apartments occupied by George the 
Second after his Queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the 
Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth. Notice being given that the 
King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone 
into the Duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the King and 
her. I knelt down and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, 
and my conductress led me back to my mother. The person of the 
King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It 
was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures 
and coins, not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark 
tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of snuff-coloured cloth, 
with stockings of the same colour, and a blue ribband over all. So 
entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the 
Duchess ; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I 
remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill- 
favoured old lady." 

This lady, the Duchess of Kendal, a German, was the king's 
lean mistress. The fat one, another German, whom he made 
Countess of Darlington, was " as corpulent and ample as the 
duchess was long and emaciated." Walpole, who gives this 
account of her, adds, that he remembered being " terrified " 
in his infancy at her enormous figure. She had " two fierce 
black eyes, large and rolling between two lofty arched eye- 
brows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of 
neck," &c, " and no part restrained by stays." " It was not," 



444 GEORGE THE SECOND. 

says Horace, " till the last year or two of his reign, that this 
foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment of taking 
openly an English mistress." This was Miss Brett, daughter 
of Savage's reputed mother the Countess of Macclesfield, by 
her second husband, Colonel Brett, whom we have seen, in 
our accounts of the Streets of London, keeping company with 
Addison. Miss Brett was a very lively and aspiring damsel. 
During the visit to Hanover just mentioned, she took it upon 
herself to break out a door from her apartments in St. James's 
Palace into the Eoyal garden. The eldest of the king's 
grand-daughters, also a very spirited person, ordered it to be 
closed up again. Miss Brett, more spirited, again broke it 
open, and we hear of the matter no further. But the king 
died on his journey, and the new mistress's empire was over. 
The new King, George the Second, while Prince of Wales, 
had quarrelled with his father, and had been ordered to quit 
St. James's with all his household. Though a great formalist, 
he was also a great, and indeed somewhat alarming, pretender 
to gallantry, being of opinion, according to Lady Wortley 
Montagu, that men and women were created solely to be 
" kicked or kissed" by him at his pleasure. It is of him that 
stories were told of the King's cuffing his ministers, and kick- 
ing his hat about the room ; and he is understood to be the 
King Arthur of Fielding's Tom Thumb. He had a wife, 
however, of some real pretensions to liveliness of mind, after- 
wards Queen Caroline, the friend of men of letters, and a very 
excellent wife too, for she was charitable to her husband's irre- 
gularities, and is said to have even shortened her life by 
putting her rheumatic legs into cold water in order to be able 
to accompany him in his walks. Here, in St. James's Palace, 
as well as at Kensington, she held her literary and philoso- 
phico-religious levees (being fond of a little theological 
inquiry) ; and here also she had brought together the hand- 
somest and liveliest set of ladies in waiting ever seen on 
these sober-looking premises before or since. For, though 
Lady Winchelsea, the poetess, was among those of James the 
Second, the ladies about that sombre personage and his Queen 
seem, for the most part, to have been both dull and ugly. 
His first Queen, Anne Hyde, had been a maid of honour her- 
self, and did not encourage the sisterhood; and his second 
Queen, the young and handsome Mary of Modena, who had 
heard of the doings at Whitehall when her husband was 
Duke of York, condescended to be jealous of him, in spite of 



ANECDOTES OF LORD CHESTERFIELD. 445 

their difference of years ; James being comparatively an old 
gentleman, while she was not out of her teens. Indeed, he 
gave cause for the jealousy, and added no hopes of amend- 
ment ; for being a Papist as well as a solemn gallant, he 
divided his time between the ugly mistresses he was fond of, 
and the priests who absolved him from the offence ; an absolu- 
tion that was superfluous, according to his brother Charles ; the 
" merry monarch" having been of opinion that the mistresses 
themselves were penance enough. 

George the Second's German mistress was a Baroness de 
Walmoden. On the death of Queen Caroline, he brought her 
over from Germany, and created her Countess of Yarmouth. 
She had two sons, the younger of whom was supposed to be 
the King's ; and a ludicrous anecdote connected with the sup- 
position and with the abode before us, is related of the famous 
Lord Chesterfield. On the countess's settlement in her state 
apartments, his lordship found one day in the palace ante- 
chamber a fair young gentleman, whom he took for the son 
in question. He was accordingly very profuse in his compli- 
ments. The shrewd lad received them all with a grave face, 
and then delightfully remarked, " I suppose your lordship 
takes me for ' Master Louis ; ' but I am only Sir William 
Eussell, one of the pages." Chesterfield piqued himself on 
his discernment, particularly in matters of intercourse ; and 
it is pleasant to catch the heartless man of "the graces" at 
a disadvantage that must have extremely mortified him. 

There is another St. James's anecdote of Chesterfield, 
which shows him in no very dignified light. Mrs. Howard, 
afterwards Countess of Suffolk, a very amiable woman, sup- 
posed to have been one of the mistresses of George the Second, 
was thought to have more influence with his Majesty than 
she possessed. Sir Robert Walpole told his son Horace that 
Queen Caroline saw Lord Chesterfield one night, after having 
won a large sum of money at court, steal along a dark 
passage under her window that was lighted only by a single 
lamp, in order to deposit it in Mrs. Howard's apartment, for 
fear of carrying it home in the dark. Sir Robert (his son 
adds) thought that this was the occasion of Chesterfield's 
losing his credit with the Queen ; but the conclusion has 
shown it to be unfounded. Chesterfield, however, though 
really a very sharp-sighted man, was rendered liable by his 
bad principles to a failure in what he thought his acutest 
views; and Caroline's better nature may have seen through 



446 GEORGE I. AND HIS SON. 

his lordship's character without the help of the lamp and the 
dark passage. 

The Queen's ladies above alluded to were the famous bevy 
of the Howards, Lepells, and Bellendens, celebrated in the 
pages of Swift and Pope. They have become well known to 
the public by the appearance of the Suffolk Correspondence, 
and Lady Hervey's Letters. George the Second, when Prince 
of Wales, and living in this palace with his father, had pro- 
bably made love to them all, fluttering more than flattering 
them, between his attentions as a prince and his unengaging 
qualities as a brusque and parsimonious man. Miss Bellen- 
den, who became Duchess of Argyle, is said to have observed 
one day to him as he was counting his money in her presence 
(probably with an intimation of his peculiar sense of the 
worth of it), " Sir, I cannot bear it. If you count your 
money any more, I will go out of the room." Another version 
of the story says that she tilted the guineas over, and then 
ran out of the room while the Prince was picking them up. 
This is likely, for she had great animal spirits. When the 
Prince quarrelled with his father, and he and his household 
were ordered to quit St. James's, Miss Bellenden is described, 
in a ballad written on the occasion, as taking her way from 
the premises by jumping gaily down-stairs. 

The occasion of this rupture between George the First and 
his son was curious. Palaces are very calm-looking things 
outside ; but within, except in very wise and happy, or very 
dull reigns, are pampered passions, and too often violent 
scenes. George the First and his son, like most sovereigns 
and heirs apparent, were not on good terms. The Princess 
of Wales had been delivered of a second son, which was to 
be christened ; and the Prince wished his uncle the Duke of 
York to stand godfather with his Majesty. His Majesty, on 
the other hand, peremptorily insisted on dividing the pious 
office with the officious Duke of Newcastle. The christening 
accordingly took place in the Princess's bed-chamber; and 
no sooner had the bishop shut the book than the Prince, 
furiously crossing the foot of the bed, and heedless of the 
King's presence, " held up his hand and forefinger to the 
Duke in a menacing attitude (as Lady Suffolk described the 
scene to Walpole) and said, \ You are a rascal, but I shall 
find you' (meaning in his broken English, ' I shall find a time 
to be revenged')." The next morning Lady Suffolk (then 
Mrs. Howard), while about to enter the Princess's apartment. 



GEOEGE II. AND HIS SON FREDERICK. 447 

was surprised to find her way barred by the yeomen with 
their halberds ; and the same night the Prince and Princess 
were ordered to quit so unexpectedly, that they were obliged 
to go to the house of their chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, 
in Albemarle Street. The father and son were afterwards 
reconciled, but they never heartily agreed. 

Nor was the case better between George the Second and the 
new Prince of Wales, his son Frederick. If George the First 
was a common-place man of the quiet order, and George the 
Second of the bustling, Frederick was of an effeminate sort, 
pretending to taste and gallantry, and possessed of neither. 
He affected to patronise literature in order to court popularity, 
and because his father and grandfather had neglected it ; but 
he took no real interest in the literati, and would meanly stop 
their pensions when he got out of humour. He passed his 
time in intriguing against his father, and hastening the ruin 
of a feeble constitution by sorry amours. 

Not long after the marriage of George the Third, Bucking- 
ham House was settled on his young Queen in the event of 
her surviving him ; and the King took such a liking to it as 
to convert St. James's Palace wholly into a resort for state 
occasions, and confine his town residence to the new abode. 
Buckingham House was so called from John Sheffield, Duke 
of Buckinghamshire, who built it. It was a dull though 
ornamented brick edifice, not unworthily representing the 
mediocre ability and stately assumptions of the owner, who 
was a small poet and a fastidious grandee, nearly as mad with 
pride as his duchess. This lady was a natural daughter of 
James the Second (if indeed she was even that, for a Colonel 
Godfrey laid claim to the paternity), and she carried herself 
so loftily in consequence, as to be wish to be treated seriously 
as a princess, receiving visitors under a canopy, and going to 
the theatre in ermine. She and the Duchess of Marlborough, 
who had a rival palace next door to St. James's, used to sit 
swelling at one another with neighbourly spite. Sheffield, 
her husband, is said to have first made love to her sister 
Anne (afterwards Queen), for which her uncle, Charles the 
Second, has been accused of sending him on an expedition to 
Tangier in a " leaky vessel." The duke wrote a long com- 
placent description of Buckingham House, that has often been 
reprinted, recording, among other things, the classical inscrip- 
tions which he put upon it and the princely chambers which 
it contained for the convenience of the births of his illustrious 



£48 QUEEN CHARLOTTE. 

house. The births came to nothing in consequence of the 
death of his only legitimate child ; a natural son inherited 
the property, and Government bought it for Queen Charlotte. 
Henceforward it divided its old appellation of Buckingham 
House with that of the " Queen's House ; " almost all the 
Queen's children were born there ; and there, as at Kew and 
Windsor, she may be said to have secreted her husband as 
much as she could from the world, partly out of judicious 
consideration for his infirmities, and partly in accordance 
with the pride as well as penuriousnes that were at the 
bottom of manners not ungentle, and a shrewd though narrow 
understanding. The spirit of this kind of life was very soon 
announced to the fashionable world after her marriage by the 
non-appearance of certain festivities ; and it continued as long 
as her husband lived, and as far as her own expenditure was 
concerned ; though when her son came to the throne she 
astonished the public by showing her willingness to partake 
of festivities in an establishment not her own. A deplorable 
exhibition of her tyrannous and unfeeling habits of exaction 
of the attentions of those about her is to be found in the 
Diary of Madame oVArblay (Miss Burney), whom they nearly 
threw into a consumption. It is clear that they would have 
done so, had not the poor waiting-gentlewoman mustered up 
courage enough to dare to save her life by persisting in her 
request to be set free. Queen Charlotte was a plain, penurious, 
soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, over-weening personage, 
"content" through a long life "to dwell on decencies for ever," 
inexorable " upon principle " to frailty, but not incapable of 
being bribed out of it by German prepossessions, and what- 
ever else might assist to effect the miracle, as was seen in the 
instance of Mrs. Hastings, who had been Warren Hastings's 
mistress, and who was, nevertheless received at court. Plea- 
sant as her Majesty might have been to Miss Burney, who 
seems to have loved to be " persecuted," she was assuredly no 
charmer in the eyes of the British nation ; nor was she in the 
slightest degree lamented when she died. Nevertheless she 
was a very good wife, for such we really believe her to have 
been ; we mean not merely faithful, (for who would have 
tempted her ?) but truly considerate, and anxious, and kind ; 
and besides this she had another merit, not indeed of the same 
voluntary description, but one for which the nation is strongly 
indebted to her, though we are not aware that it has ever been 
mentioned. We mean that her cool and calculating brain 



QUEEN VICTORIA. 449 

turned out to be a most happy match for the warmer one of 
her husband, in ultimate as well as immediate respects; for 
it brought reason back into the blood of his race, and drew a 
remarkable line in consequence between him and his children ; 
none of whom, however deficient in abilities, partook of their 
father's unreasonableness, while some went remarkably counter 
to his want of orderliness and self-government. The happy 
engraftment of the Cobourg family on the stock, completed 
this security in its nacst important q carter; and if ever a 
shade of more than ordinary sorrow for the necessity should 
have been brought across the memory in that quarter by a 
ridiculous pen, the sense of the security ought to fling it to 
the winds, with all the joy and comfort befitting the noblest 
brow and the wisest reign that have yet adorned the annals of 
its house. 




T»K END. 



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